18 high-profile predictions that failed miserably

Fortunately (less often - unfortunately) for us, not all "one hundred percent" forecasts of even the most authoritative experts turn out to be correct. Here are some striking examples.

"Who wants to listen to talking actors in a movie?" - Harry Warner, the founder of the Warner Brothers film company, said at the time.

"By June, it will all be over," Variety Magazine wrote about the future of rock and roll in 1955.

"Very soon it will turn out that the X—ray is just a hoax," Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society of London, assured in 1883.

"A rocket will never be able to escape from the earth's atmosphere," the New York Times believed in 1936.

"The abdominal cavity, chest and brain will forever remain closed to the intervention of human surgeons," said the outstanding British surgeon Sir John Eric Eriksen in the 1870s.

"No one will ever be able to build a large aircraft," said a Boeing engineer shortly after the appearance of a twin-engine aircraft capable of lifting only 10 people.

"There is not the slightest hope that nuclear energy will ever become available. This would mean that an atom can be split at the will of a person," - this is the very rare case when Albert Einstein was wrong. He said this in 1932.

"Anyone with a little understanding of the subject will understand that this is an inevitable failure," Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, said at the time about the Edison light bulb.

"There will always be a horse, and a car is just fun, a temporary hobby," with these words in 1903, the president of the Michigan Savings Bank tried to convince Henry Ford's legal advisers not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

"Television won't last long. People will soon get tired of looking into a plywood box every night," said film producer Darryl Zanuck in 1946.

"Rail travel at high speed is impossible, because in this case passengers will not be able to breathe and will die of asphyxia," concluded Dr. Dionysius Lardner, professor of natural sciences and astronomy, in 1823.

"There is no need for a person and there will be no need to keep a computer in his house," said Ken Olson, founder and head of Digital Equipment Corporation, addressing the World Society of the Future in 1977.

"The potential global market for copiers is a maximum of 5,000 units," IBM told the future founders of Xerox, believing that there are not enough consumers of photocopiers for mass production.

"Children are no longer interested in stories about wizards and witches," J.K. Rowling heard from the first publisher she turned to in the hope of publishing her Harry Potter.

"If excessive addiction to smoking plays a role in the development of lung cancer, it is very insignificant," said W.K. Huper of the American National Cancer Institute in 1954.

"No, it will make wars impossible," replied Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun, when asked how his invention will change wars — will they become more terrible or, conversely, less terrible?

"The wireless music box has no commercial value. Who wants to pay for a message sent to someone unknown?", - David Sarnov's partners said about radio in 1921.

"Astronomy has come close to the limit of knowledge that it can achieve," said American-Canadian astronomer Simon Newcomb. He was convinced that we had learned everything we could about astronomy back in 1888.