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. (20th Century-Fox, 1946)
Inventions - Inventors Quotes
This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. (Internal memo, 1876)
Good enough for our transatlantic friends… but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men. (Regarding Thomas Edison’s light bulb, 1878)
I have travelled 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. (Editor of business books, 1957)
Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. (Regarding Robert Goddard’s revolutionary work, 1921)
The wireless telegraph is one of the most wonderful inventions the world has ever seen. I think it will be of great commercial use some day and as I have seen it demonstrated on the ship in which I have just arrived I can say that it is very marvelous indeed.
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing; he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.
The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it… 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.
Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
I invent nothing. I rediscover everything.
