[extropy-chat] Re: Bad Forecasts!

John K Clark jonkc at att.net
Sat Sep 11 05:54:20 UTC 2004


He who talks about the liberation of atomic energy on an industrial basis is
talking moonshine”.

Lord Rutherford September 1933

There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib
supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a
completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has
introduced a few fool-proof devices into the great majority of elements that
constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the
process of disintegration.

- Robert A. Millikan [1928 speech to the Chemists' Club (New York)]

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.

That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go
off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.

- Admiral William Leahy. [Advice to President Truman, when asked his opinion
of the atomic bomb project.]

The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on
seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be
associated in the consciousness of the patient.

- Dr. Alfred Velpeau (1839), French surgeon

There is a young madman proposing to light the streets of London—with what
do you suppose—with smoke!

- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) [On a proposal to light cities with
gaslight.]

When the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it and no
more be heard of.

- Erasmus Wilson (1878) Professor at Oxford University

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.

- Editorial in the Boston Post (1865)

Radio has no future.

- Lord Kelvin  British mathematician and physicist, . 1897.

 What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives
traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?

- The Quarterly Review, England (March 1825)

Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to
breathe, would die of asphyxia.

- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and
Astronomy at University College, London.

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, 1909.

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of
an expert saying it can't be done.

- Peter Ustinov


John K Clark    jonkc at att.net







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