Cloudy Days In Tomorrowland

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Jan 27, 1997

Visions Of Our Century Without Airplanes, Without Television Or Home Computers, Even Without (Gasp!) The Beatles.

We'd like to think all our predictions will prove right. But the highways of history are littered with wrong calls, false insights and bad guesses. Here's a sampler of 20th century futurology that flopped.

I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Eversince I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.
WILBUR WRIGHT
US aviation pioneer, 1908

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating it's crew and floundering at sea.
H.G WELLS
British novelist, 1901

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marshal FERDINAND FOCH
French military strategist and future World War I commander, 1911

The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.
A president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising HORACE RACKHAM (Henry Ford's lawyer) not to invest in the Ford Motor Co. 1903

Believe me. Germany is unable to wage war.
Former British prime minister DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, Aug 1, 1934

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
CHARLES H. DUELLS
U.S. commissioner of patents, 1899

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
HARRY M. WARNER
Warner Brothers, 1927

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
KENNETH OLSEN
President and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow in our Pacific possessions ... Radio makes surprise impossible.
JOSEPHUS DANIELS
former U.S. secretary of the navy, Oct 16, 1922

What use could this company make of an electrical toy?
Western Union president WILLIAM ORTON, rejecting Alexander Graham Bell's offer to sell his struggling telephone company to Western Union for $100,000

Computers in the future may perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
POPULAR MECHANICS forecasting the development of computer technology, 1949

We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.
DECCA RECORDS rejecting the Beatles, 1962

The election of Hoover ... should result in continued prosperity for 1929.
ROGER W. BABSON
American financial statistician and founder of the Babson Institute. Sep 17, 1928

Radio has no future.
LORD KELVIN, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897

I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, 1936

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
IRVING FISHER professor of economics, Yale University, Oct 17, 1929

[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.
DARRYL F. ZANUCK head of 20th Century Fox, 1946

For the majority of the people tobacco has a beneficial effect.
Dr. IAN G. MACDONALD
Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in Newsweek, Nov 18, 1963.

Man will never reach the moon regardless of all scientific advances.
Dr. LEE DE FOREST inventor of the Audion tube and father of radio. Feb 26, 1967