Predictions that didn't happen

Predictions that didn't happen

Even the most brilliant minds have already made wrong predictions about the future. At the time they were first said they probably did not seem as absurd as they do now. The future has arrived and it doesn't seem anything like these predictions...

1. I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse

Robert Metcalfe, in 1995. Reported in: New Scientist, Volume 151 (1996)

4. Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind

Harvard Biologist George Wald, in 1970. As reported in: Free Market Environmentalism (Springer, 2001), Chapter 1

5. This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.

William Orton, President of Western Union, in 1876. As reported in: AT&T Consent Decree (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 166

6. [We shall be able to produce] strawberries as large as apples for our great-great-grandchildren; raspberries and blackberries so big that one will suffice for a single person.

An enthusiast in horticulture, in 1901. As reported in: The Independent, Volume 53 (1901), p. 740

7. Democracy will be dead by 1950.

John Langdon-Davies, in 1936. A short history of the future (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1936), p. 125

8. The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.

The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Ford's lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company. In: The Truth about Henry Ford (1922) by Sarah T. Bushnell, p. 57

9. TV will not be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox movie studio, in 1947. As reported in: Minutes of the Meeting (1983), p. 16



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