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Failed predictions

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This is a list of failed predictions. Psychics and would-be prophets often give exact details of what is about to happen and when the day passes, their followers conveniently forgot they ever said anything of the kind, remembering mainly those that happened to come true.

Science fiction is often set in the future, but is very rarely intended to be an actual prediction of events to come; a timeline of fictional future events is listed elsewhere.

The History of Unfulfilled Prophecy by Christians deals specifically with failed predictions by prophets or leaders within the Christian church, though not any contained within the Bible itself.

This is an [Incomplete listsincomplete list], which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and additions are welcome.
Contents

A History of Doomsday Prophecies

Many doomsday predictions, including ones predicting the end of the world, the return of a deity, or a cataclysmic event, have been conventionally vague. However, some people have come up with very specific predictions.

Past

Rapture posters such as this one were spread across New England
Enlarge
Rapture posters such as this one were spread across New England

Future

Other predicted dates have yet to pass.

Failed Predictions Made by People Not Claiming to be Prophets, Referring to History, Art, Science, etc.

By no means, however, are doomsday prophecies the only predictions that human beings ever make that turn out to be wrong. Many people- most, in fact- make predictions about the future not because they claim to be a prophet or such, but simply because they are basing their predictions on their own thoughts and feelings about history, the arts, science, etc. Scientists and economists, as well as any other professional in any business - not to mention any layperson - can make a failed prediction.

The following is a list of such failed predictions. The list is broken up into three main sections: Technology, Science/Medicine/Health, and Bad Predictions. The Technology and Bad Predictions sections are further divided into categories which fit under those sections.

Technology

Technology in this case refers to tools, machines, and other tangible devices that are used by humans for certain processes. All quotes in all categories of this section refer to these types of technology.
  • "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.
  • "640K ought to be enough for anybody." or "No one will need more than 637 kilobytes of memory for a personal computer."
  • * Two variants of the same quote, often misattributed to Bill Gates in 1981. Gates has repeatedly denied ever saying this, and he points out that it has never been attributed to him with a proper source. In fact, the memory limitation was due to the hardware architecture of the IBM PC. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/99ce4b0555bf35f4 http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,1484,00.html http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm
  • "But what... is it good for?" -- IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 about the microprocessor, the heart of today’s computers.
  • "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?" -- Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter's call for investment in the radio in 1921.
  • "Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public ... has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company ..." -- a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.
  • "To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." -- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
  • "... too far-fetched to be considered." -- Editor of Scientific American, in a letter to Robert Goddard about Goddard's idea of a rocket-accelerated airplane bomb, 1940 (German V2 missiles came down on London 3 years later).
  • "A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." -- New York Times, 1936.
  • "That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's breakthrough work on rockets. The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue, in a humorous editorial - this was just before the historic moon landing of Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969, so of course Goddard’s theory of rockets had been proven correct after all.
  • "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
  • "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere." -- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.
  • "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.
  • "There will never be a bigger plane built." -- A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

  • "The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems... The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300." –- Robert Ferry, executive of the U.S. Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955.
  • "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
  • "Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous." -- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939.
  • "The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." -- Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.
  • "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932.#redirect
  • "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." -- Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.
  • "The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
  • "That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." -- Scientific American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909.
  • "The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle." -- Literary Digest, 1899.
  • "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.
  • "A man has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires." -- News item in a New York newspaper, 1868.
  • "Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition." -- Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962.

Miscellaneous Technology
  • "Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
  • "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

  • "... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." -- British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison’s light bulb, 1878.
  • "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.

Railroads

Science/Medicine/Health

Science in this case refers to any of the diverse scientific fields of study, Medicine refers to the scientific study of the body and how it functions, and Health refers to the study of how to keep the body functioning well.

Bad Predictions

Bad Predictions in this case refers to predictions about future events, enterprises, careers, etc. that proved to be wrong later.

Future historical/social/pop cultural events

Celebrities/Athletes/Great artists and their work

Entrepreneurs and their revolutionary ideas

See also

References

External Links

 

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