- This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication. Western
Union internal memo, 1876.
- Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. Lord
Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
- Everything that can be invented has been invented. Charles
H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
- 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.
- Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? H.
M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927
- I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
- Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000
vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only
1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons. Popular
Mechanics, March 1949
- 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 for any individual to have a computer
in his home. Ken Olson, President, Digital
Equipment, 1977
- 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? 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.
- 640 K ought to be enough for anybody. Bill
Gates, 1981
- The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English.
Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters
like N and T. Scott McNealy, chairman of
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Trust the computer industry to shorten "Year 2000"
to Y2K. It was this kind of thinking that caused the problem in the
first place. David Ewing Duncan
- We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards
could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the
Internet, we know this is not true. Robert Wilensky
- Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex,
and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to
move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
- The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than
any other invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
Mitch Ratcliffe.
- Programming today is a race between software engineers
striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe
trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is
winning. Rich Cook
- Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying
to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools. Marshall
McLuhan
- Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that by
means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve,
vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Nathaniel
Hawthorne
- It was not so very long ago that people thought that
semiconductors were part-time orchestra leaders and microchips were
very small snack foods. Geraldine Ferraro
- If the automobile had followed the same development
cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million
miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
- There are only two enterprises that refer to their customers
as users, and one is illegal. Michael Hammer
- It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a
steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any
other Important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we
forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did.
Mark Twain
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic. Arthur C. Clarke
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from a rigged demo. James Klass
- The only thing more dangerous than a hardware guy with
a code patch is a programmer with a soldering iron.
- When people can program computers in English, management
will learn most people don't know English. Eric
Guerrino
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