Funny Wrong Predictions
This first one was my favorite from the list.
- 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.
- But what … is it good for?”
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
- “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.
- “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
