Even the smartest people have been wrong on occasion. You have to wonder why so many of the statements made by these people were so closed minded. Did they become so full of themselves they believed they knew more than everyone else or was it just lack of foresight? Lord Kelvin was president of the Royal Society from 1890 to 1895. He was a famous mathematical physicist and engineer who was born in Belfast in 1824. He was knighted for his work on the transatlantic telegraph project. Units of temperature were named after him and are called Kelvins. Yet this famous scientist had decided X-Rays were some kind of a trick and stated they will prove to be a hoax.

One of the most respected newspapers is the New York Times. The science column is well read, but is it always correct on its assumptions? I guess it is only fair to say sometimes what science believes is correct, is later proved to be just the opposite. In 1936 the New York Times printed the reasons why a rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. We all know what happened after that just a few years later in Germany.

One of my favorite predictions was made by an engineer for the Boeing Corporation after the Boeing 247 was built and flew for the first time. The plane was capable of holding ten people. It came out in 1933 and was considered a huge plane. It went into service as a passenger airline in 1933 with United Air Lines. It had two engines. The engineer proudly proclaimed there would never be a bigger airplane made. Wonder what he would have thought after seeing the Antonov An-225 which weighs 640 tons?

Einstein was one of the smartest people who ever lived yet his IQ was said to be 160 which is high, but not as high as some. This may prove there is something even more important than IQ and it is how one’s brain is wired. Einstein contributed to the invention of the atomic bomb and yet this same man proclaimed there was no indication we could ever obtain nuclear energy, because it would mean we would have to be able to shatter the atom at will. He also said gravitational radiation was impossible, but the paper he wrote on this was rejected and he was later proven wrong.

Decca records has become UMG, Universal Music Group. One would think a company which can trace it roots back to 1929 would be able to spot a hit group very easily. When the company had the chance to sign the Beatles in 1962 the executives said they didn’t like their sound and also stated guitar music was on the way out.

Oh how shortsighted some companies can be. A Western Union memo from 1876 hung up on the telephone saying it had too many shortcomings and that was why it could never be viewed as a useful means of communication. The memo went on to say the device had no value as far as the company was concerned. In 1943 Thomas Watson was the president of IBM. Computers were just being developed and in truth were huge things that filled many rooms with wires and tubes. Watson probably thinking this was how computers would remain looked at them and said there might only be a market for about five of them in the entire world. Darryl Zanuck was the executive officer of 20th Century Fox and in 1946 when asked how television would fare he said it would not be able to hold on to the market it captures and would only last about six months. He finished his prediction off by saying people would soon get tired of starring at a plywood box every night.

There were so many predictions concerning the end of the human race I could fill a book with them. I will only quote a few of them here. In 1970 Denis Hayes who was the chief organizer of Earth Day said in 1970 it was too late to avoid mass starvation. Remember Life magazine? In 1970 they reported scientists had solid evidence that within a decade people living in cities would have to wear gas masks to survive pollution and by 1985 the amount of sunlight reaching the earth would only be half of what it was. I guess this prediction could be considered correct for some cities in China.

Edison made a prediction which couldn’t have been more wrong. He predicted the house of the next century would not only be made of steel, but so would all the furniture. He went on to say gold was on the way out and would become so common it would only cost the same to buy a bar of gold as a bar of steel. Here is what he thought, he believed steel would easily be able to be converted into gold.

Alex Lewyt was the president of the Lewyt vacuum company. Unlike most of the other predictions which didn’t go far enough, his prediction went too far. In 1955 he predicted there would be nuclear powered vacuum cleaners in the next ten years. One civil engineer named John Elfreth Watkins made a prediction in 1900 which stated by the year 2,000 our alphabet would be changed and the letters C,X and Q would no longer exist, because they were unnecessary.

An article appeared in Businessweek in 1968. It stated since we have over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale in the U.S., the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big share of the auto market for itself. Irving Fisher was called the most noted economist of the 20th century. In 1929 he came out with a statement that claimed stocks had reached a permanent high plateau, but just three days later the entire stock market crashed.

These predictions may look funny to us today, but you could understand why some of them were made when you look carefully and see what they were based on. Who knew computers would shrink or new materials would be invented? We have to excuse some of these people for what they predicted.