Perhaps Lord Kelvin’s best-known quote of this type is from 1895 when he was President of the Royal Society: “Heavier-than-air machines are impossible.” Just to make sure that everyone understood what he meant, he expanded on it a year later, saying, “I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning… I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.”
Another rich source of interesting and amusing quotes comes from the effect of the electron on our lives — through communications, broadcasting and computers. When the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, asked Michael Faraday what was the use of his newly invented dynamo, Faraday replied: “I know not, but I wager that one day your government will tax it.”
Electric circuits led to the invention of the electric telegraph and later the telephone. However, it was not immediately apparent that the telephone would change our lives forever. In 1876, an internal memo of Western Union, the leading telegraph company in the USA, said: “This “telephone” has too many short-comings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Fortunately for Western Union, either this was ignored or they changed their minds shortly afterwards.
A similar about-turn took place right at the beginning of public radio broadcasting in the 1920s. David Sarnoff, the father of broadcasting in the USA, is quoted as saying: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” Incidentally, David Sarnoff was the New York wireless telegraph operator for messages relayed in Morse code from ships at sea who received the message in 1912: “SS Titanic ran into iceberg, sinking fast.” He stayed at his post without sleep for 3 days and was the sole source of information on land as the extent of the tragedy gradually became known. History seemed to repeat itself in 1946 when Darryl F. Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox, said: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first 6 months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
Nobody could possibly have foreseen the incredible progress that computers have made and the impact they have on almost all aspects of our daily lives. You may already be familiar with Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM, who forecast in 1943, “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” Popular Mechanics magazine in 1949, commenting on the relentless march of science, said: “Computers in future may weigh no more than 1,5 tons.” Ken Olson, founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, was no more clairvoyant in 1977 when he said: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Finally, when the computer I use in some of my research has a memory size measured in gigabytes, the observation in 1981 of Bill Gates, founder of the Microsoft Corporation, that “640 K ought to be enough for anybody” looks a little short-sighted.
Comprehension check
Answer the following questions:
1. What did Lord Rutherford say about the energy produced by the atom?
2. Why did Sir Richard Wooley say that the idea of space travel was bilge?
3. “X-rays are a hoax”, said Lord Kelvin. Do you agree?
4. What invention has changed our life forever?
Make a list of quotes.
Give a brief summary of the text.
UNIT 4
SOFTWARE PIRATES, AVAUNT!
Vocabbox
noun collocations
§ e-commerce capability
§ piracy protection
§ end-user
§ general-purpose register
§ executable file
verb collocations
§ enable end-user
§ involve
§ tailor security preference
§ enclose a file
§ retrieve a code
§ limit an access
Pre-reading task
Name the main problems that you think are discussed in the text.
Reading
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