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Odd Predictions. Assembled by Dr. Lloyd Brooks The University of Memphis. 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. Need for Future Patents.
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Odd Predictions Assembled by Dr. Lloyd Brooks The University of Memphis
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
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
Movie Prediction • “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” • Gary Cooper, after turning down the lead role in “Gone With The Wind.”
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
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
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
Graphical User Interface • “I see no advantage to the graphical user interface.” • Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, in 1984
Computer Size • “Computers in the future may weigh as little as 1.5 tons.” • Popular Mechanics Magazine in 1949
Telephone as a Toy • “It’s only a toy.” • Gardines Green Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bell’s future father in-law, on seeing Bell’s telephone in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone
Einstein Prediction • “It doesn’t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.” • Albert Einstein’s teacher to his father in 1895
Phonograph • “The phonograph has no commercial value at all.” • Thomas Edison in 1922
Radio Prediction • “The radio craze will die out in time.” • Thomas Edison in 1922 1920s radio
Computer RAM Size • “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” • Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, in a 1981 speech
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
Copying Machines • “The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most.” • IBM to the founders of Xerox in 1959
Stock Prices • “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” • Irvin Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, in 1929
Space Travel • “Space travel is bunk.” • Sir Harold Spencer, Astronomer in Great Britain, in 1957—two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
Elvis Career • “You ought to go back to driving a truck.” • Concert manager at the Grand Ole Opry while firing Elvis in 1954
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
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
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 won’t last out the year.” • Statement by an editor in charge of business textbooks at Prentice Hall in 1957