Famously Inaccurate Predictions

Here is a list of 25 of the world’s worst predictions. Everybody is aware of some but certainly not all. In hindsight it is absurd that these predictions could have been made but that is the problem with predictions, the mind-shift required to incorporate the change is beyond most people’s ability. This inability pervades even the highly intelligent including Einstein.

Being a devotee of science and technology, I avidly read magazines such as Popular Science, the New Scientist and Scientific America during the 1970s. Perennially on the long term discoveries lists of 10 years or more were fibre optics together with fusion power. Whereas 50 years later fusion power is still on the long range list, overnight in the late 1970s, fibre optics migrated in one year from the long term to the already discovered list.

So it is with other discoveries.

Even celebrity inventors and scientists at the leading edge of their field fall prey to this phenomenon. Take Thomas Edison as a foremost example. The Englishman Michael Faraday might have discovered how to generate electricity –by revolving a magnet around a wire – Thomas Edison, amongst his numerous inventions had developed the first electric light bulb. His source of power was Direct Current – DC – which was subject to one fatal weakness. Direct Current could only travel short distance whereas Alternating Current could travel inordinately vast distances. Ironically the discoverer of AC, Nikola Tesla worked for Edison, however Edison’s closed mind failed to understand the advantages of AC over DC power.

Edison was a very aggressive, posturing, public image person while Tesla was a quiet, withdrawing, sensitive person; two completely different people in every way. In order to prove that Alternating Current was extremely dangerous and should not be selected as the power source for Buffalo, New York State, he arranged an experiment whereby the novel method of execution viz the electric chair would use AC instead of DC current.

The unfortunate miscreant was strapped to the gurney and the power switched on. Instead of instantly killing the victim as Edison had predicted, he started smouldering. In full view of reporters and evaluators of the technology, the guinea pig had to endure a few minutes of excruciating pain before finally succumbing.

Edison had very publically failed and humiliated

The immediate decision was to generate AC power from the newly installed hydroelectric plant on the Niagara Falls using Westinghouse’s technology with Tesla as consultant.

On a more personal note, I experienced vindication when a “prediction” actually eventuated. In 1968 at the age of 15, I had read that the Americans were on the cusp of landing a man on the moon. At that stage, a friend of mine was Jonathan Cockcroft who lived in Second Avenue Newton Park.

Jonathan had recently discovered religion. Needless to say he had become religious after accepting Jesus into his life.

In passing, I happened to mention what the Americans were planning. An immediate rebuff and verbal altercation ensued.

“God,” I was told in a forthright manner, “Would never condone such a thing happening.”

Nevertheless I was vindicated when two weeks thereafter the Americans did indeed land on the moon.

Needless to say our friendship was at an end never to be resuscitated.

An autobiography by one, Gabrielle West, on her experiences during WW1 when she joined the WPS – Woman’s Police Service – in Britain comes to mind. This expedient – Woman Policemen – was tolerated for the duration of the war due to the paucity of available men. On signing the Armistice, “normality” reasserted itself and the wartime experiment was terminated on the spurious grounds that females in the force would “distract” males.