What if the inventions we’re enjoying now didn’t materialise? If inventors gave up their ideas at the slightest discouragement, what would have happened? What if they never even tried? What kind of world could we be living in now?
Can you imagine?
The word has power. And how you say things matter.
But motivation, belief and attitude make a perfect mixture for realising one’s potential.
To succeed or not lies in the decision of a person – you.
So let’s look back at famous statements made by equally famous people during their time. Some were made hastily, and some made out of disbelief.
In the end, these inventions took the world by storm and brought us to the new frontier of human possibilities.
1876
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.”
William Orton, President of Western Union
1879
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
William Preece, British Post Office
1889
“Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.”
Thomas Edison
1903
“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.”
President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company
1929
“Talking films are a very interesting invention, but I do not believe they will remain long in fashion.”
Louis-Jean Lumière, inventor of the cinematograph
1943
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
IBM president Thomas Watson
1946
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox
1955
“Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.”
Alex Lewyt, President of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company
1959
“Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”
Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General
1961
“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States.”
T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission
1966
“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.”
Time Magazine
1981
“Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.”
Marty Cooper, pioneer of wireless communications
1995
“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com in 1995
2005
“There’s just not that many videos I want to watch.”
Steve Chen, Co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about Youtube’s future when he started it in 2005. (It then went into hyper-drive and he sold it to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion)
2006
“Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.’”
David Pogue, The New York Times in 2006. (The iPhone came out in 2007)
2007
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
What’s the point of us going through these statements?
Remember what Peter Drucker, Management Consultant, Educator, and Author said:
‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.’
We don’t need runes or crystal balls or tarot cards to foresee what lies ahead. Being the masters of our own destiny, the direction of what lies ahead rests in our hands.
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