Predictions that didn't quite work out

In preparation for tomorrow's sermon, Sci Fi, you might check out some of these predictions from the past. See more at wikiquote.org.

Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.
- Dr Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.

That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.
- Scientific American, January 2, 1909.

Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons.
- Andrew Hamilton, "Brains that Click", Popular Mechanics 91 (3), March 1949, (pp. 162 et
seq.) at p. 258.

With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself.
- Business Week, August 2, 1968.

Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.
- Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.
- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.

Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition.
- Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962.

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.

Radio has no future.
- Lord Kelvin, Northern Irish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897.

Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.
- Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.
- Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889.

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
- Pierre Pachet, British surgeon and Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.
- Simon Newcomb, Canadian-born American astronomer, 1888.

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.
- Associates of Edwin L. Drake refusing his suggestion to drill for oil in 1859.