HISTORICAL BLUNDERS

Created on 22 March, 2025 • 33 views • 4 minutes read

Throughout history, there have been numerous blunders that have had significant consequences. Here are some notable examples.

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

It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Pat Robertson, speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment Mar. 22, 1930

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

Senator Dan Quayle, Sept. 15, 1988

The great question - which I have not been able to answer - is, "What does a woman want?"

Sigmund Freud

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

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. Prentice Hall, editor in charge of business books, 1957

But what ... is it good for?

Anonymous engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

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.'

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer Inc. on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his personal computer.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

Ken Olson , President, Chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Bill Gates, 1981

Natura non facit saltum. (Nature does not make leaps.)

Anonymous ancient motto frequently cited by Carolus Linnaeus

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.

Anonymous drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible.

Anonymous Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

In a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and ... the only occupation which will then be left to the men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

James Clerk Maxwell, 1871

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being suplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote ... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.

Albert A. Michelson, 1894

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.

New York Times, in editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.

Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

The good Christian should beware the mathematican and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicans have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

Saint Augustine

First, . . . to want to affirm that in reality the sun is at the center of the world and only turns on itself without moving from east to west, and the earth . . . revolves with great speed around the sun . . .is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false. Nor can one answer that this is not a matter of faith, since if it is not a matter of faith "as regards the topic," it is a matter of faith "as regards the speaker"; and so it would be heretical to say that Abraham did not have two children and Jacob twelve, as well as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, because both are said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the prophets and the apostles.

Cardinal Bellarmine, in a Letter to Foscarinin, April 12, 1615

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?

Anonymous associates of David Sarnoff's in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

Irving Fisher, 1929

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers film studios, 1927

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Lord Kelvin, 1895

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

Simon Newcomb , 1902, eighteen months before Kitty Hawk

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.