Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Apocrypha
Three popular and oft repeated "faulty predictions":
Bill Gates (from Wired): I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
Regarding Watson's supposed comment on the number of computers, there's no evidence that he ever said it.
There's a tangled history on Charles H. Duell's misquote but there's no evidence that Duell made this statement nor that he resigned because there was "nothing left to invent".
While it may be amusing to imagine this sort of short-sightedness, all three are misquotes.640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
-- Thomas J. Watson
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Resignation letter of Charles H. Duell, US Commissioner of Patents, 1899
Bill Gates (from Wired): I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
Regarding Watson's supposed comment on the number of computers, there's no evidence that he ever said it.
There's a tangled history on Charles H. Duell's misquote but there's no evidence that Duell made this statement nor that he resigned because there was "nothing left to invent".
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