Famous Incorrect Predictions
"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad" The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" Response of Associates of David Sarnoff, when invited to invest in radio
Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy -Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
"I think there is a market for about five computers." Thomas Watson, Sr. Founder of IBM, 1943
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. -Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olsen, President and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"640k ought to be enough for anybody" Attributed to Bill Gates in 1981.
Why Are These Predictions Incorrect? People predict the future incorrectly because the "wrong" answer makes sense at the time ---Watson could not have known about:
* Miniaturization
* Networking
* The Internet
* User friendly, graphical user interfaces
* ing costs of computer components
Multimoda
