The 10 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time By David Zeiler

In hindsight, these 10 worst tech predictions all look utterly ridiculous.

But what’s obvious now is almost never obvious in the nascent stages of any tech revolution.

These horrible predictions all have in common a profound inability to see the value of a new technological development. They all failed to identify these breakthroughs as game changers.

And while the poor souls who made these statements get all the derision, at the time many people – if not a majority of people – agreed with them.

That’s why in a few years we might see Bitcoin making its way on to this list…Which brings us to the 10 worst tech predictions of all time…

The 10 Worst Tech Predictions Ever

In chronological order, to be fair:

Worst Tech Prediction No. 1: Electric Lights, 1870s
Supposedly, Professor John Henry Pepper, a Victorian-era celebrity scientist, after seeing Thomas Edison’s lightbulb in the 1870s, said, “Do not bother to sell your gas shares. The electric light has no future.” Such thinking was probably typical of the era, but preposterous given the prevalence of electric lighting today.

Worst Tech Prediction No. 2: The Telephone, 1876
When Alexander Graham Bell approached Western Union Co. (NYSE: WU) with his invention, the company president wrote an internal memo: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Amazingly, a century later in 1981, Marty Cooper, director of Research at Motorola, made this prediction to the Christian Science Monitor: “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems. Even if you project it beyond our lifetimes, it won’t be cheap enough.”

Worst Tech Prediction No. 3: The Airplane, 1895
Renowned British mathematician, physicist, and engineer – and President of the Royal Society – Lord Kelvin voiced a widely held notion when he declared: “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

And it only gets worse from here…

Worst Tech Prediction No. 4: The Automobile, 1903
Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, went to Michigan Savings Bank seeking an investment in a little startup called the Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F). The president of the bank declined the opportunity, saying, “the horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.”

Worst Tech Prediction No. 5: Radio, 1923
Radio visionary David Sarnoff wrote a lengthy memo to the executives of the newly created Radio Corporation of America (RCA) explaining the potential of the new technology. At first the executives ignored Sarnoff, as the company was created primarily as a patent holding company. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” one scoffed. But eventually Sarnoff won over the doubters, and later was named president of RCA.

Worst Tech Prediction No. 6: Television, 1939
At first, television made no sense to a lot of people. Here’s what The New York Times had to say in 1939: “The problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and that the average American wouldn’t have time for it.” A few years later, in 1946, movie mogul Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox was similarly dismissive: “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.”

Worst Tech Prediction No. 7: E-commerce, 1966
While Time magazine could not have foreseen personal computers, not to mention the more recent mobile wave of tablets and smartphones, it was certain that shopping in brick-and-mortar stores would never be challenged: “Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop,” Time wrote. “Because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.” Yikes.

Worst Tech Prediction No. 8: The PC Revolution, 1977
Many were skeptical in the 1970s that personal computers would ever become ubiquitous, but you wouldn’t expect such talk from Ken Olsen – the president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, a mainframe computer company. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,” Olsen said at a gathering of the World Future Society.

Worst Tech Prediction No. 9: The Internet, 1995
No less than two prominent scientists predicted a bleak future for the Internet in 1995. Astronomer Clifford Stoll wrote an entire Newsweek column on the topic in which he called such things as e-commerce, telecommuting, and online education “baloney.” That same year the guy who co-invented the Ethernet networking protocol, Robert Metcalfe, predicted that “the Internet in 1996 will catastrophically collapse,” suggesting its infrastructure would be overwhelmed by all the traffic.

Worst Tech Prediction No. 10: The iPhone, 2007
When Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone came out, few in the mobile phone industry thought it would amount to much. But it was Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer who truly embarrassed himself. “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.” At the end of 2013, the iPhone had 48% of the U.S. smartphone market compared to 3% for Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

Have you ever been wrong about a new technology that later turned out to be a major development? Confess your mistakes on Twitter @moneymorning or Facebook.

As noted earlier, the latest technological breakthrough to get no respect is Bitcoin. And yet despite all the negativity, the pace of investment in the digital currency is accelerating. And many of these investors are major players…