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	Although we are living in what may be termed the steam era
	and our Navy is a steam navy, I have in his work wholly excluded
	the consideration of steam power, as, owing to the great cost
	of coal and the impossibility of providing stowage for it
	except to a limited extent, the application of steam power for
	ordinary purposes must be strictly auxiliary and subordinate
	and its employment in general service the exception rather than 
	the rule.
						Manual of Seamanship
						Captain Alston, RN
						1859

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	You'll never make it -- four groups are out.
			Anonymous record company executive to the Beatles
			1962

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	Even considering the improvements possible...the gas
	turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application
	to airplanes because of the difficulties of complying
	with the stringent weight requirements.
						US National Academy Of Science
						1940

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	People have been talking about a 3,000 mile high-angle 
	rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an 
	atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon...
	I think we can leave that out of our thinking.
						Dr. Vannevar Bush
						1945

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	Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an
	unexpected blow at our Pacific possessions... Radio
	makes surprise impossible.
						Josephus Daniels
						1922

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	I could whip all the Indians on the Continent with the 7th Cavalry.
						George Armstrong Custer
						June 25, 1876

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	Everything that can be invented has been invented.
						Charles H. Duell
						U.S. Commissioner for Patents
						1899

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	Fooling around with alternating current is a waste of time.
	Nobody will use it, ever.
						Thomas Edison

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	There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy 
	will be obtainable.
						Albert Einstein
						1932

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	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
						1926

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	The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators,
	but that doesn't mean they are any good at making aircraft.
	They are bluffing.  They are excellent at bluffing.
						Hermann Goering
						1942

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	The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not
	for the near future, in spite of many rumours to that effect.
						Harper's Weekly
						1902

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	Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see
	no hope for future improvements.
						Julius Frontenus
						10 A..D.

@

	By 1960 work will be limited to three hours a day.
					John Langdon-Davies
					A Short History of the Future
						1936

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	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

@

	Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems
	for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to
	lick them.
						Science Digest
						1948

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	Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers,
	unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.
						Dr. Dionysus Lardner
						1793-1859

@

	I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced
	radioactivity.
						J.B.S. Haldane

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	The aeroplane is the invention of the devil and will never
	play any part in such a serious business as the defence
	of a nation.
						Sir Sam Hughes
						(Canadian Minister of Defence)
						1914

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	X-rays will prove to be a hoax.
						Lord Kelvin

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	Radio has no future.
						Lord Kelvin

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	Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
						Lord Kelvin
						1895


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	Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine.
						R.S. Lambert
						(Canadian Broadcaster)
						1936
@

	No one will ever be able to measure nerve impulse speed.
						Johannes Muller
						German Physiologist
						(1846)

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	Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical  and
	insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
						Simon Newcomb
						1902

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	Ariel flight is one of that class of problems with which man
	will never be able to cope.
						Simon Newcomb
						1903!

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	There is no reason for any individual to have a computer
	in their home.
						Ken Olson
				       	President Digital Equipment Corp.
						1977

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	A popular fantasy is to suppose that flying machines
	could be used to drop dynamite on the enemy in time
	of war.
						William Henry Pickering
						1908
@

	The resistance of air increases as the square of the speed
	and works as the cube [of speed]....  It is clear that with
	our present devices there is no hope of aircraft competing for
	racing speed with either our locomotives or automobiles.
						William Henry Pickering
						1910

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	What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out
	of locomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches?
						Quartely Review
						1825

@

	Our boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars.
						Franklin D. Roosevelt
						October 30, 1940

@

	The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a
	very poor kind of thing.  Anyone who expects a source of
	power from the transformations  of these atoms is
	talking moonshine.
						Ernest Rutherford
						1930

@

	It can be taken for granted that before 1980 ships, aircraft,
	locomotives  and even automobiles will be atomically fueled.
						David Sarnoff
						1955

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	The director of Military Aeronautics of France has decided 
	to discontinue the purchase of monoplanes, their place to
	be filled entirely with bi-planes.  This decision practically
	sounds the death knell of the monoplane as a military instrunent.
						Scientific American
						1915

@

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

@

	They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!
					Major General John Sedgwick
					Spotsylvania Courthouse
					May 1864

@

	Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our
	attention from serious things.  We are in great haste to construct
	a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas,
	it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
						Henry David Thoreau

@

	As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
	highest parts of the eartth's atmospheric envelope, Professor
	Goddard's rocket is a practical and therefore promising device.
	It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler
	to the moon that one begins to doubt...for after the rocket quits
	our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would
	neither be accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
	charges it then might have left.  Professor Goddard, with his
	"chair" at Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian
	Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action,
	and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
	which to react....  Of course he only seems to lack the
	knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
						New York Times editorial
						1920

@

	I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring,
	refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but
	soffocating its crew and foundering at sea.
						H.G. Wells
						1901

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	As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, 
	you just can't do it.
						Rear Admiral Clark Woodward
						1939

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	Space travel is utter bilge.
						Richard Woolley
						Astronomer Royal
						(1956)
@
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