I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years… Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.
WILBUR WRIGHT, U.S. aviation pioneer, 1908
H.G. WELLS, British novelist, 1901
Marshal FERDINAND FOCH, French military strategist and future World War I commander, 1911
A president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising HORACE RACKHAM (Henry Ford’s lawyer) not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903. Rackham ignored the advice, bought $5,000 worth of stock and sold it several years later for $12.5 million.
Former prime minister DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, Aug. 1, 1934
CHARLES H. DUELL, U.S. commissioner of patents, 1899
HARRY M. WARNER, Warner Brothers, 1927
KENNETH OLSEN, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Dr. LEE DE FOREST, inventor of the Audion tube and a father of radio, Feb. 25, 1967
JOSEPHUS DANIELS, former U.S. secretary of the navy, Oct. 16, 1922
Western Union president WILLIAM ORTON, rejecting Alexander Graham Bell’s offer to sell his struggling telephone company to Western Union for $100,000
POPULAR MECHANICS, forecasting the development of computer technology, 1949
DECCA RECORDS rejecting the Beatles, 1962
ROGER W. BABSON, American financial statistician and founder of the Babson Institute, Sept. 17, 1928
LORD KELVIN, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, 1936
IRVING FISHER, professor of economics, Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929
DARRYL F. ZANUCK, head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946
Dr. IAN G. MACDONALD, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in NEWSWEEK, Nov. 18, 1963
