Good enough for our transatlantic friends… but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men. (Regarding Thomas Edison’s light bulb, 1878)
Technology Quotes
I have travelled 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 business books, 1957)
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. (Regarding Robert Goddard’s revolutionary work, 1921)
The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? (Associate of radio pioneer David Sarnoff, 1920s)
Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work. (Response of Cambridge aeronautical engineering professor, shown Frank Whittle’s plan for a jet engine)
For God’s sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him – he may have a razor on him. (Editor, responding to a visit from John Logie Baird, inventor of a prototype television apparatus, 1925)
Everything that can be invented has been invented. (Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899)
The difference between a rabbit and a rock is the information content, and the difference between a living and a dead rabbit is in the availability or usability of the information.
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do […]
Optimization hinders evolution.
