"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.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would
pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment
in the radio in the 1920s.
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"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."
--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment
Corp., 1977
"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.'"
--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and
H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
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