Preposterous Predictions

     There have always been scoffers, of course, those mean-spirited, short-sighted skeptics who pop up whenever somebody proposes a bold new idea.  They’re the vociferous naysayers, the critics who trumpet that it shouldn’t or can’t or won’t be done.

     Here are seven glaring naysayer blunders:

“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” —New York Times editorial, 1920

“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” —Lord Kelvin, Royal Society president, 1890s

“Stock Prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”—Irving Fisher, Yale economics professor, 1929

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” —Pierre Pachet, Toulouse physiology professor, 1872

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” —Harry Warner of Warner Brothers, 1927

“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications.” —Western Union company memo, 1876

“Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone . . . probably never.”

 —David Pogue, tech columnist, New York Times, 2006

     And how many have said that Trump would never make it this far?

Phil