Classic examples of, "It's not the the Medium, it's the Messenger's Fault"

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation of action to re-action,
and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to
react....he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high
schools."
-- 1920 New York Times editorial on Robert Goddard's rocket work.

"Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for
human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them."
-- Science Digest, 1948

"The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not
for the near future, in spite of many rumours to that effect."
-- Harper's Weekly, 1902

"The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy;
and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of
course, come into as common use as the bicycle."
-- Literary Digest, 1899

"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to
breathe, would die of asphyxia."
-- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of
locomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches?"
-- Quarterly Review, 1825

"Railroad Carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 mph by engines
which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and
snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to the crops,
scaring the livestock, and frightening women and children. The Almighty
certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck
speed."
-- Martin Van Buren

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895


"Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible."
-- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902
　
"The director of Military Aeronautics of France has decided to discontinue
the purchase of monoplanes, their place to be filled entirely with
bi-planes. This decision practically sounds the death knell of the
monoplane as a military instrunent."
-- Scientific American, 1915

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be
obtainable."
-- Albert Einstein, 1932

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention
from serious things. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic
telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have
nothing important to communicate."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to
see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and
foundering at sea."
-- H. G. Wells, 1901
　
"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
　
"That the automobile has reached the limit of its development is suggested
by the fact that during the last year no improvements of a radical nature
have been introduced."
-- Scientific American, 1909
　
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981