DUMB PREDICTIONS

The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it today. Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient. To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves."
—Dr. Alfred Velpeau, 1839
Anesthesia was introduced 7 years later

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
—Lee De Forest,
"Father of the Radio," 1926

"At present, few scientists foresee any serious or practical use for atomic energy. They regard the atom-splitting experiments as useful steps in the attempt to describe the atom more accurately, not as the key to the unlocking of any new power."
—Fortune magazine, 1938

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
—The Quarterly Review, 1825

"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."
—The Literary Digest, 1889

"The energy necessary to propel a ship would be many times greater than that required to drive a train of cars at the same speed; hence as a means of rapid transit, flying could not begin to compete with the railroad."
—Popular Science magazine, 1897