Odd Predictions

1
Odd Predictions

• Assembled by
• Dr. Lloyd Brooks
• The University of Memphis

2
Career Prediction

• You better learn secretarial work or get married
  because you have no career in show business.
• Director of Blue Book Modeling Agency to Marilyn
  Monroe in 1944

3
Need for Future Patents

• Inventions have long since reached their limit,
  and I see no hope for future developments.
• Roman engineer, Julius Sextus Frontius in 10 AD

4
Movie Prediction

• Im just glad itll be Clark Gable whos falling
  on his face and not Gary Cooper.
• Gary Cooper, after turning down the lead role in
  Gone With The Wind.

5
Voice Transmittal

• Well informed people know it is impossible to
  transmit the voice over wires and that were it
  possible to do so, the thing would be of no
  practical value.
• Boston Post Newspaper in 1865

6
Television Prediction

• The problem with television is that the people
  must sit and keep their eyes glued to a screen.
  The average American family does not have time
  for it.
• The New York Times, 1939

7
Telephone Prediction

• The telephone has too many shortcomings to be
  seriously considered as a means of
  communications. The device is inherently of no
  value to us.
• Western Union in an internal memo in 1876

8
Graphical User Interface

• I see no advantage to the graphical user
  interface.
• Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, in 1984

9
Computer Size

• Computers in the future may weigh as little as
  1.5 tons.
• Popular Mechanics Magazine in 1949

10
Telephone as a Toy

• Its only a toy.
• Gardines Green Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bells
  future father in-law, on seeing Bells telephone
  in 1876

Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone
11
Einstein Prediction

• It doesnt matter what he does, he will never
  amount to anything.
• Albert Einsteins teacher to his father in 1895

12
Phonograph

• The phonograph has no commercial value at all.
• Thomas Edison in 1922

13
Radio Prediction

• The radio craze will die out in time.
• Thomas Edison in 1922

1920s radio
14
Computer RAM Size

• 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
• Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, in a 1981 speech

15
Airmail

• An impractical sort of fad, and has no place in
  the serious job of postal transportation.
• Second U. S. Postmaster General Paul Henderson on
  airmail in 1922

General "Hap" Washington
16
Copying Machines

• The world potential market for copying machines
  is 5,000 at most.
• IBM to the founders of Xerox in 1959

17
Stock Prices

• Stocks have reached what looks like a
  permanently high plateau.
• Irvin Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale
  University, in 1929

18
Space Travel

• Space travel is bunk.
• Sir Harold Spencer, Astronomer in Great Britain,
  in 1957two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

19
Elvis Career

• You ought to go back to driving a truck.
• Concert manager at the Grand Ole Opry while
  firing Elvis in 1954

20
Microsoft Value

• 100 million is way too much to pay for
  Microsoft.
• IBM in 1982 when offered an opportunity to
  purchase Microsoft for 100 million

21
Federal Express

• The concept is interesting and well-formed, but
  to earn a grade better than a C, the idea must
  be feasible.
• A Yale University professor in response to a
  paper submitted by Fred Smith, FedEx Founder and
  CEO

22
Data Processing

• I have traveled the length and breadth of this
  country and talked with the best people, and I
  can assure you that data processing wont last
  out the year.
• Statement by an editor in charge of business
  textbooks at Prentice Hall in 1957

23
Your Prediction?