The doubters have a perfect record. All losses.

The Quarterly Review: "What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage-coaches?"

twice as fast as a stagecoach is now called traffic

An early fixture.

A remark attributed to William Preece, of the British Post Office: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."

you have made a phone call

The New York Times calculates that a flying machine might take "one million to ten million years" of engineering effort.

the Wright brothers flew 69 days later

The editorial appeared on October 9. The flight was December 17.

Ernest Rutherford declares that anyone looking for power in the atom is "talking moonshine."

the moonshine now runs whole countries

Decca Records rejects the Beatles. A line later attributed to that decision: "Guitar groups are on the way out."

the guitar groups did not get the memo

Ken Olsen is quoted saying, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." He later said he meant a computer running the household, not a personal computer.

A less tidy result than the quote collections suggest.

Newsweek prints "Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana": no online database will replace the daily newspaper.

you are reading this on the nirvana in question

An economist who would later win the Nobel Prize: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

the fax machine sends its regards

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." Said on camera, by a CEO, smiling.

there is a fair chance you are holding one