Most Inaccurate Technology Predictions of the Last 150 Years.

There’s a long-standing tradition among scientists, engineers, and industrialists. They are never far from making predictions. In recent times, these 3 conversations are not far from people’s lips in the tech world:

• Is AI a major technology, or is it just a buzzword?
• Chat GPT vs Bard: who will win in 2023?
• Will this finally be the year that the average person can afford to buy a ticket and travel to the moon?

Well, technology has proven to be extraordinarily slippery over the past century. Despite the vast information that industry insiders have had at their fingertips, they’ve made some pretty terrible forecasts over the years.

The predictions that history remembers most are those that demonstrate spectacular misjudgment, misunderstanding, overly optimistic hyperbole, self-delusion, or good old-fashion wishful thinking. Predictions are a risky business. Even more so if they’re about the immediate future. Once shown to be wrong, the words return to their origin like a boomerang, and the quotes go on to forever haunt the speaker.

Like in 1994 when Pele said an African team would win the world cup before 2010. Well, an African got its first semi-final stage at the last world cup.

From the great Albert Einstein being proved wrong, to Apple emphatically blowing the predictions of a Microsoft co-founder out of the water, we listed the very worst predictions, which show how even the titans of industry don’t always know what they’re talking about. Whether they were predictions about technological progress, adoption rates, or market potential, we can all agree that these predictions were dead wrong.?

Here are some wrong predictions you wouldn’t believe were made by significant people

?1876: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” — William Orton, President of Western Union.

1876: “The Americans need the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office.

1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison.

1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

1921: “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.

1926: “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.” — Lee DeForest, “Father of Radio” and a pioneer in the development of sound-on-film recording used for motion pictures. He had over 180 patents.

1932: “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.

1936: “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times.

1946: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, film producer, and co-founder of 20th Century Fox.

1949: “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh one and a half tons.” — Popular Mechanics.

1957: “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.” — Editor of Prentice Hall business books.

1959: “The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most.” IBM told the eventual founders of Xerox.

1961: “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States.” — T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner.

1977: “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” — Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp.

1981: “No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft.

1981: “Cellular phones will not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.

1989: “We will never make a 32-bit operating system.” — Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft.

1992: “The idea of a personal communicator in every pocket is a “pipe dream driven by greed.” — Andy Grove, then CEO of Intel.

1995: “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet.

2003: “The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful.” — Steve Jobs, in Rolling Stone

2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

Today, we must remain open-minded and objective in assessing technological advancements. We should avoid confusing trends with facts and refrain from making predictions solely based on narrow assumptions. Embracing new technologies with informed acceptance, rather than dismissal, is crucial in our ever-evolving world. At Revent Technologies, we are bent on providing unique solutions to your businesses. We disapprove of Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S Office of Patents in 1899, who said that “Everything that can be invented has been invented”. Visit our website today and let’s invent new solutions that put you at the top of the market and ahead of your competitors.?

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