TECH-TALK

But what...is it good for?
-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968; commenting on the microchip.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

This "telephone" has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

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.

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, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

The Americans may have need of the telegraph. We, on the other hand, have plenty of messenger boys.
-- a British Lord, dismissing telecommunications out of hand.

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.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction"
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872