Nobody would have thought it. I mean, seriously, who could have predicted 2020? This year has felt like the longest decade of my life. Yours, too? We didn't see it coming. Nobody did. And, it isn't even over yet. When I was a kid, I remember it was common to see predictions for the coming year. I don't know if any of them ever came true, but they were were always a fun read. But, nobody ever predicted a year like 2020 with a nasty little virus, new vocabulary like "social distancing", a quarantine - for two weeks - to "slow the curve", and the complete disappearance of toilet paper from all stores. No, nobody was crazy enough to predict any of that.
So, it got me thinking. What are some of the more spectacular blunders people have predicted in the past? I'm sure those people never predicted a computer or the Internet. They probably never would have made their predictions if they knew that today anyone could look up their mistakes on a Google search. But, the blunders were predicted and they are out there for people like me to find.
Here are a few of my favorites. Of course, the information is off the Internet. So, read on knowing that not everything you find on the Internet is actually, partially or totally true.
Technology
1865 - The unidentified person quoted in the Boston newspaper is most likely thrilled to be forever unknown. Why, you might ask? He said, "Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires as may be done with dots and dashes of Morse code, and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
1876 - on a Western Union internal memo. "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." Perhaps in 1876, teenagers didn't go out to restaurants with their friends?
1878 (approximately) - J.P. Morgan's father, Junius Morgan, warned his son that electricity was just a fad. As sons have done throughout time, J.P. ignored his father's advice. He invested heavily in Thomas Edison and General Electric. His home in New York City was the first private residence in the city to have electric lighting. Edison, perhaps the only man I'm going to quote who could see the future, claimed, "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
1878 - Oxford professor, Erasmus Wilson, was in the dark when he said, "When the Paris Exhibition closes, the electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of."
1878 - British Parliamentary Committee on Edison's light bulb, "… good enough for our transatlantic friends … but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.”
1878 - According to Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."
1880 - Henry Morton, president of the Institute of Technology put his foot in his mouth when he wrote about Edison's light bulb. "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."
1899 - Charles H. Duell, the U.S. commissioner of patents, said, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
1932 - Even everyone's favorite genius, Albert Einstein, couldn't get it right every time. He declared, "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."
1961 - T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, said, "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.”
1966 - Long before the Internet existed and a nasty little virus came onto the world's scene, Time magazine published an article called "The Futurists". The author predicted what might happen in the coming decades and guessed about the possibility of remote shopping. Whoever wrote these words of wisdumb knew it would never catch on. You might ask why, but you won't like the answer. It's because "women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds."
1985 - Erik Sandberg-Diment, in The New York Times, said, "For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few … On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper.”
1995 - Clifford Stoll, in a Newsweek article entitled "The Internet? Bah!", didn't see the writing on the wall. "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper."
1995 - Robert Metcalfe, with a very long and impressive resume in technology, predicted in InfoWorld that the Internet would "soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." He promised to eat his words if ever proven wrong. And, Metcalfe lived long enough to do just that. In a keynote speech in 1997, he pulled out the page with his predictions from a magazine, tossed it into a blender, and then drank it down before a live audience.
2005 - Sir Alan Sugar, a British business magnate, said, "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."
2007 - Steve Ballmer, businessman, investor and CEO of Microsoft, is quoted in USA Today, "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." It appears that he missed out on this investment.
Transportation
1800 - Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London, Dr. Dionysys Larder's line of thinking was not on the right track. "Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
1825 - The Quarterly Review asked, "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
1859 - Associates of Edwin L. Drake refused his suggestion to drill for oil. "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy!" Obviously, they never watched the Beverly Hillbillies.
1864 - King William I of Prussia was on the wrong side of train transportation when he said, "No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free."
1902 - Simone Newcomb, a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician, didn't know the persistence and determination of people from Ohio. A mere 18 months before the Wright Brothers flew in Kittyhawk, Newcomb said, "Flight by machines heavier than the air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
1903 - The president of the Michigan Savings Bank offered advice to Henry Ford's lawyer. The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." How many horses in your garage?
1904 - Ferdinand Foch, French general and military theorist, said, "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
1909 - In an edition of Scientific American, it was stated, “That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.”
1916 - Aide-de-camp to Field Marshall Haig at a tank demonstration, “The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous.”
1936 - In The New York Times, "A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."
1956 and 57 - Richard Ban Der Riet Woolley, Astronomer Royal, and Sir Harold Spencer Jones, English astronomer, did not grow up watching Star Trek and Star Wars. Woolley declared, "Space travel is utter bilge." Jones said, "Space travel is bunk." He said this a mere two weeks before Sputnik orbited the earth.
1968 - Businessweek had no business discussing foreign automobiles. "With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."
Entertainment
1837 - Philip Hale, Music Critic, couldn't spell Phillip correctly or judge music. He declared, "If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse."
1916 - How could an actor, producer, director, studio founder and legend like Charlie Chaplin get it so wrong? "The cinema is a little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."
1921 - David Sarnoff, commercial radio and television pioneer, responded to a call to invest in radio. "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?"
1927 - H. M. Warner, of Warner Brothers, didn't know what he and his siblings were getting into. At least, that's how it appears when he asked, "Who the hell(o, how are you?) wants to hear actors talk?" Well, maybe, just maybe, he was talking about actors on politics?
1930 - British journalist, editor, publisher and politician C.P Scott is quoted as having said, "Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."
1939 - The New York Times ran an article by Orrin E. Dunlap Jr. that claimed, "The problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and the average American wouldn't have time for that."
1944 - Emmeline Snively, American model, said, "You better get secretarial work or get married." She gave the advice to Marilyn Monroe.
1946 - Darryl Zanuck, a movie producer for 20th Century Fox, might have been a Times subscriber. He clearly didn't see our future when he said, "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." If he wasn't already long dead, he would be at the thought of a 98" flat screen with more features that anyone could possibly understand for the bargain Christmas price of $59,999.99. I kid you not.
1955 - Variety wrote, "It will be gone by June." What will be gone? Rock 'n' Roll.
1962 - A Decca Records executive didn't love them, yeah, yeah, yeah. He told band manager Brian Epstein, "The Beatles have no future in show business. We don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished."
1966 - A United Artists executive, rejecting Ronald Reagan for the lead in The Best Man, said, "Reagan doesn't have that presidential look."
1969 - Gus Bally, Arcades Inc., said, "People won't want to play these electronic games for more than a week, not once we start selling pinball machines for the home."
1996 - Barry Cunningham, editor at Bloomsbury Books and most likely to kick himself - where he deserves to be kicked - for the rest of his life, to J.K. Rowling. "You'll never make any money out of children's books." Two years later, the world was introduced to Harry Potter.
Health
1839 - Dr. Alfred Velpeau, surgeon you would never want to meet, said, "The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it … knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.”
1873 - Sir John Erie Erichsen, British doctor to Queen Victoria, announced, "The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." The first brain surgery was performed in 1884, by British surgeon Rickman Godlee, to remove a brain tumor. The first heart surgery, in 1895, was performed by Axel Cappelen in Oslo, Norway. There is no documentation whether either of these doctors were wise or humane.
1883 - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, said, "X-rays will prove to be a hoax." He might have thought differently if he grew up watching Superman.
1954 - W.C. Harper, National Cancer Institute, is quoted, "If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.”
History
1486 - At a time when everyone knew the world was flat, the committee advising King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain on matters of Christopher Columbus, said, "So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value."
1616 - According to the Roman Catholic Church, "The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical ... the view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least, an erroneous belief."
1872 - Pierre Pachet, another surgeon you would not want operating on you, said, "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
1888 - Simon Newcomb, astronomer and the only one to make this list twice, observed, "We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”
1895 - "It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything." Albert Einstein's teacher to his father.
1905 - Grover Cleveland, U.S. President and surprisingly married, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
1930 - Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, declared, "No 'scientific bad boy' ever will be able to blow up the world by releasing atomic energy."
1939 - Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, said, "Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
1941 - On December 4, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, made a declaration to calm the nation concerning Japanese aggression in the Pacific. "Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping." We all know what happened at Pearl Harbor three days later.
1974 - Margaret Thatcher, British Stateswoman, said, "It will be years - not in my lifetime - before a woman will become Prime Minister. Okay, in case you are too young to know, she became Prime Minister.
2012 - The date on the Maya calendar for the end of the world was December 21. Okay, they were wrong, but it feels like they were only off by eight years. If it really ended that day, at least I wouldn't have turned a year older. My birthday was the next day.
The Bible
I haven't included any prophecies from the Bible here. They all come true. But, if any of these people that I wrote about lived back in ancient Israel, every single one of them would have kept their mouths shut. It was not healthy to make any false predictions. The standard was really high in Israel. One mistake. One little slip up, and you were considered a false prophet. And, what happened to false prophets? They were killed, every one of them. Perhaps Mark Twain understood all of this predicting better than anyone else. He said, "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."
So, it got me thinking. What are some of the more spectacular blunders people have predicted in the past? I'm sure those people never predicted a computer or the Internet. They probably never would have made their predictions if they knew that today anyone could look up their mistakes on a Google search. But, the blunders were predicted and they are out there for people like me to find.
Here are a few of my favorites. Of course, the information is off the Internet. So, read on knowing that not everything you find on the Internet is actually, partially or totally true.
Technology
1865 - The unidentified person quoted in the Boston newspaper is most likely thrilled to be forever unknown. Why, you might ask? He said, "Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires as may be done with dots and dashes of Morse code, and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
1876 - on a Western Union internal memo. "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." Perhaps in 1876, teenagers didn't go out to restaurants with their friends?
1878 (approximately) - J.P. Morgan's father, Junius Morgan, warned his son that electricity was just a fad. As sons have done throughout time, J.P. ignored his father's advice. He invested heavily in Thomas Edison and General Electric. His home in New York City was the first private residence in the city to have electric lighting. Edison, perhaps the only man I'm going to quote who could see the future, claimed, "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
1878 - Oxford professor, Erasmus Wilson, was in the dark when he said, "When the Paris Exhibition closes, the electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of."
1878 - British Parliamentary Committee on Edison's light bulb, "… good enough for our transatlantic friends … but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.”
1878 - According to Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."
1880 - Henry Morton, president of the Institute of Technology put his foot in his mouth when he wrote about Edison's light bulb. "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."
1899 - Charles H. Duell, the U.S. commissioner of patents, said, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
1932 - Even everyone's favorite genius, Albert Einstein, couldn't get it right every time. He declared, "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."
1961 - T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, said, "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.”
1966 - Long before the Internet existed and a nasty little virus came onto the world's scene, Time magazine published an article called "The Futurists". The author predicted what might happen in the coming decades and guessed about the possibility of remote shopping. Whoever wrote these words of wisdumb knew it would never catch on. You might ask why, but you won't like the answer. It's because "women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds."
1985 - Erik Sandberg-Diment, in The New York Times, said, "For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few … On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper.”
1995 - Clifford Stoll, in a Newsweek article entitled "The Internet? Bah!", didn't see the writing on the wall. "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper."
1995 - Robert Metcalfe, with a very long and impressive resume in technology, predicted in InfoWorld that the Internet would "soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." He promised to eat his words if ever proven wrong. And, Metcalfe lived long enough to do just that. In a keynote speech in 1997, he pulled out the page with his predictions from a magazine, tossed it into a blender, and then drank it down before a live audience.
2005 - Sir Alan Sugar, a British business magnate, said, "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."
2007 - Steve Ballmer, businessman, investor and CEO of Microsoft, is quoted in USA Today, "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." It appears that he missed out on this investment.
Transportation
1800 - Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London, Dr. Dionysys Larder's line of thinking was not on the right track. "Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
1825 - The Quarterly Review asked, "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
1859 - Associates of Edwin L. Drake refused his suggestion to drill for oil. "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy!" Obviously, they never watched the Beverly Hillbillies.
1864 - King William I of Prussia was on the wrong side of train transportation when he said, "No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free."
1902 - Simone Newcomb, a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician, didn't know the persistence and determination of people from Ohio. A mere 18 months before the Wright Brothers flew in Kittyhawk, Newcomb said, "Flight by machines heavier than the air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
1903 - The president of the Michigan Savings Bank offered advice to Henry Ford's lawyer. The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." How many horses in your garage?
1904 - Ferdinand Foch, French general and military theorist, said, "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
1909 - In an edition of Scientific American, it was stated, “That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.”
1916 - Aide-de-camp to Field Marshall Haig at a tank demonstration, “The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous.”
1936 - In The New York Times, "A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."
1956 and 57 - Richard Ban Der Riet Woolley, Astronomer Royal, and Sir Harold Spencer Jones, English astronomer, did not grow up watching Star Trek and Star Wars. Woolley declared, "Space travel is utter bilge." Jones said, "Space travel is bunk." He said this a mere two weeks before Sputnik orbited the earth.
1968 - Businessweek had no business discussing foreign automobiles. "With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."
Entertainment
1837 - Philip Hale, Music Critic, couldn't spell Phillip correctly or judge music. He declared, "If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse."
1916 - How could an actor, producer, director, studio founder and legend like Charlie Chaplin get it so wrong? "The cinema is a little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."
1921 - David Sarnoff, commercial radio and television pioneer, responded to a call to invest in radio. "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?"
1927 - H. M. Warner, of Warner Brothers, didn't know what he and his siblings were getting into. At least, that's how it appears when he asked, "Who the hell(o, how are you?) wants to hear actors talk?" Well, maybe, just maybe, he was talking about actors on politics?
1930 - British journalist, editor, publisher and politician C.P Scott is quoted as having said, "Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."
1939 - The New York Times ran an article by Orrin E. Dunlap Jr. that claimed, "The problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and the average American wouldn't have time for that."
1944 - Emmeline Snively, American model, said, "You better get secretarial work or get married." She gave the advice to Marilyn Monroe.
1946 - Darryl Zanuck, a movie producer for 20th Century Fox, might have been a Times subscriber. He clearly didn't see our future when he said, "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." If he wasn't already long dead, he would be at the thought of a 98" flat screen with more features that anyone could possibly understand for the bargain Christmas price of $59,999.99. I kid you not.
1955 - Variety wrote, "It will be gone by June." What will be gone? Rock 'n' Roll.
1962 - A Decca Records executive didn't love them, yeah, yeah, yeah. He told band manager Brian Epstein, "The Beatles have no future in show business. We don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished."
1966 - A United Artists executive, rejecting Ronald Reagan for the lead in The Best Man, said, "Reagan doesn't have that presidential look."
1969 - Gus Bally, Arcades Inc., said, "People won't want to play these electronic games for more than a week, not once we start selling pinball machines for the home."
1996 - Barry Cunningham, editor at Bloomsbury Books and most likely to kick himself - where he deserves to be kicked - for the rest of his life, to J.K. Rowling. "You'll never make any money out of children's books." Two years later, the world was introduced to Harry Potter.
Health
1839 - Dr. Alfred Velpeau, surgeon you would never want to meet, said, "The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it … knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.”
1873 - Sir John Erie Erichsen, British doctor to Queen Victoria, announced, "The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." The first brain surgery was performed in 1884, by British surgeon Rickman Godlee, to remove a brain tumor. The first heart surgery, in 1895, was performed by Axel Cappelen in Oslo, Norway. There is no documentation whether either of these doctors were wise or humane.
1883 - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, said, "X-rays will prove to be a hoax." He might have thought differently if he grew up watching Superman.
1954 - W.C. Harper, National Cancer Institute, is quoted, "If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.”
History
1486 - At a time when everyone knew the world was flat, the committee advising King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain on matters of Christopher Columbus, said, "So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value."
1616 - According to the Roman Catholic Church, "The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical ... the view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least, an erroneous belief."
1872 - Pierre Pachet, another surgeon you would not want operating on you, said, "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
1888 - Simon Newcomb, astronomer and the only one to make this list twice, observed, "We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”
1895 - "It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything." Albert Einstein's teacher to his father.
1905 - Grover Cleveland, U.S. President and surprisingly married, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
1930 - Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, declared, "No 'scientific bad boy' ever will be able to blow up the world by releasing atomic energy."
1939 - Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, said, "Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
1941 - On December 4, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, made a declaration to calm the nation concerning Japanese aggression in the Pacific. "Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping." We all know what happened at Pearl Harbor three days later.
1974 - Margaret Thatcher, British Stateswoman, said, "It will be years - not in my lifetime - before a woman will become Prime Minister. Okay, in case you are too young to know, she became Prime Minister.
2012 - The date on the Maya calendar for the end of the world was December 21. Okay, they were wrong, but it feels like they were only off by eight years. If it really ended that day, at least I wouldn't have turned a year older. My birthday was the next day.
The Bible
I haven't included any prophecies from the Bible here. They all come true. But, if any of these people that I wrote about lived back in ancient Israel, every single one of them would have kept their mouths shut. It was not healthy to make any false predictions. The standard was really high in Israel. One mistake. One little slip up, and you were considered a false prophet. And, what happened to false prophets? They were killed, every one of them. Perhaps Mark Twain understood all of this predicting better than anyone else. He said, "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."
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