http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
6. “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
7. “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.
8. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

9. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

10. “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

A generation ago, a black-white couple set out to write a book called “Time on the Cross” which was to be the usual crying session about the suffering of blacks under slavery. They then started READING for it.

The result was a book that got screamingly denounced by all the Mommy Professors who would have demanded the usual Prizes for the one originally intended.

It turned out that as the authors READ THE FACTS, they found that masters encouraged stable families among their blacks. Score one for Family Values! They WORK!

Secondly, a master didn’t want to cause trouble in the population they had to LIVE among.

Thirdly, another practical point. A man who owned a plantation who wanted to dally was rich. He could find plenty of white girls to dally with.

The really awful plantations, and there were plenty of them, were the ones where the owner was an absentee. Unlike Northern factory workers, the resident owner knew every one of his workers BY NAME. He had daily contact with them. So they were treated, BY NINETEENTH STANDARDS, well.

“Time on the Cross” ended up being an econometric study, showing the percentage of total output that went to the workers. It was astonishingly high on plantations compared to other NINETEENTH CENTURY production facilities.

Oddly enough, in tandem with this point, the study concluded that the plantation economy, contrary to the accepted belief, was actually very profitable. It PAID to treat your workers well.

This was a deadly blow to Marxism, which insists that the more you exploited workers, the more you profit.

This, and the confirmation tha families values worked, turned Mommy Professor’s anger into sreaming rage.

There were octoroon parties and like disgusting crap in the cities, but that was voluntary.

Reality is a real damper on Politically Correct history.