1981 – Marty Cooper, then director of research at Motorola – “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems”
Marty is now thought of as the father of the mobile phone. He clearly had no idea how successful his pet project would become. His thinking was that the mobile phone would remain prohibitively expensive. It turns out they give them away for “free” now. You can play Angry Birds on them too which he probably didn’t see coming.
1873 – Sir John Eric Erichsen – Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria – “The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”
Thankfully he was wrong there, surgeons are always nipping in and out of people’s chests and brains, and most of the time they do the world of good in there.
1912 – Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, writing in Technical World magazine – “The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous”
I think the problem is that war has always been ridiculous. Technology, unfortunately has just made war more “efficient” and swift.
1923 – Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner – “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom”
That’s another quote I wish had been true. Us humans have not just tapped the power of the atom, we’ve turned it into a running stream that lays waste to anything we desire. Terrifying power.
1936 – New York Times – “A rocket will never be able to leave earth’s atmosphere”
Well, we did that, over and over again, and even managed to return safely through the atmosphere onto terra firma. In the New York Time’s defense, it must have seemed pretty fanciful at the time that us measly humans would be able to make it into the harsh blackness of space. But as ever, a few decades later, technology achieved the unthinkable.
☛ More: VIDEO: All 2000+ Nuclear Explosions Ever
