Inventing Fun, Facts & Trivia

Big Thinking!

• "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons." — Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
   
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM,1943
   
• "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." — The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall,1957
   
• "But what ... is it good for?" — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
   
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
   
• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.  The device is inherently of no value to us." — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
   
• "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.  Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" — David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
   
• "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible." — A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.  (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
   
• Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" — Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
   
• "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." — Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."
   
• "A cookie store is a bad idea.  Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." — Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting her company, Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
   
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." — Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
   
• "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." — Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
   
• "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment  The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives or 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
   
• "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?$nbsp; Or we'll give it to you.  We just want to do it.  Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.  And they said, 'No.'  So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you;  you haven't got through college yet.'" — Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
   
• "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.  He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." — 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
   
• "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles?  It can't be done.  It's just a fact of life.  You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." — Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
   
• "Drill for oil?  You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?  You're crazy." — Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
   
• "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." — Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
   
• "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
   
• "Everything that can be invented has been invented." — Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
   
• "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". — Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
   
• "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". — Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.
   
• "640K ought to be enough for anybody." — Bill Gates, 1981