"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense." - Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, 1800s
"Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." - Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880
"The phonograph has no commercial value at all." - Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s
"Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work." - Cambridge Aeronautics Professor, when shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
|