Thursday, January 24, 2008

These guys got it wrong

«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. Newcomb was not impressed.

«Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.»
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

«It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.»
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.

«Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.»
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.

«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.

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