Confident predictions gone wrong

‘Reagan doesn’t have that presidential look’ - United Artists executive after rejecting Reagan as lead in the 1964 lm ‘The Best Man’

Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognise it as a conspicuous failure’ - Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology on Edison’s light bulb, 1880 ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’ - Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

‘Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia’ - Dr Dionysius Lardner, 1830