Wacky Quotes
- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
- "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
- "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
- "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
- "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
- "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 bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
- "This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed."
-- Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast.
- "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
- "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
- "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
-- Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.
- "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
- "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
- "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.
- "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.
- "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"
-- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
- "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
-- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."
- "A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
- "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
- "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
- "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M "Post-It" Notepads.
- "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 Hewlett-Packard interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
- "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."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
- "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
- "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
- "If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one."
-- Dr. W.C. Heuper of the National Cancer Institute, as quoted in the New York Times on April 14, 1954.
- "For the majority of People, smoking has a beneficial effect."
-- Dr. Ian G. Macdonald, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in "Newsweek", Nov. 8th 1963.
Really Stupid People
- Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
- A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
- A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.
- A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
- The Chico, California City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
- A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
- Swedish business consultant Ulfaf Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
- A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
- Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
- When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
- The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
- The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
- Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
- Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
- David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
- Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
- In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
- Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
- February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
- Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonald's.
- The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
- No word in the English language rhymes with month.
- The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
- There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
- Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
- Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
- Cat's urine glows under a black light.
- Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
- The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
- Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
- It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
- In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
- Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
- The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
- Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
- If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
- The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
- Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
- No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.
- The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."
- In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured.
- Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
- One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
- The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
- Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
- The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
