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When history's brightest minds get it catastrophically wrong! Join us as we count down our picks for the most spectacular expert blunders that changed the world. From dismissing life-saving medical practices to declaring technological breakthroughs impossible, these confident predictions aged like milk.
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00:00Why not change to camels for the next 30 days, and see what a difference it makes in your smoking enjoyment?
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the wrongest experts in the game.
00:12The Model T was the game changer of the car world, and the way it was put together changed the game for the manufacturing world too.
00:21Number 10. Communication Satellites, Silly Sci-Fi.
00:25Then came Sputnik and Telstar. Tunis' Augustus McDonough Craven wasn't some cranky Luddite.
00:31He was a Navy communications officer turned chief engineer and then commissioner for the FCC.
00:36The man lived his life with a front-row seat to the future of technology.
00:40He even saw Sputnik spark the space age.
00:42Until two days ago, that sound had never been heard on this Earth.
00:46Suddenly, it has become as much a part of 20th century life as the were of your vacuum cleaner.
00:51It's a report from man's farthest frontier, the radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik.
00:58Yet in 1961, Craven confidently dismissed the idea of communication satellites.
01:03He said, quote,
01:04There is practically no chance that communication space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service, end quote.
01:14At the time, it sounded reasonable.
01:16Rockets were still experimental, and space was mostly the stuff of pulp novels.
01:20Just a few years later, Telstar bounced the first live TV signal across the Atlantic.
01:25Owned by AT&T, Telstar was also the first privately sponsored space launch and produced the first transatlantic television signals.
01:33It turns out, satellites were the future of communication after all.
01:37Number 9.
01:38High-speed rail is impossible.
01:40Now it's global.
01:41In 1823, science writer Dionysus Lardner had a grave warning for the world.
01:47Trains going faster than 30 miles per hour would asphyxiate passengers.
01:52Some people thought that, you know, the steam engines would scare the cows and they'd all drop dead, or that the sheep would kind of turn black, or that if you traveled at more than 30 hours an hour, your lungs would blow up.
02:05King William I of Prussia reportedly scoffed,
02:08No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour, when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.
02:15For some of history's most educated minds, relatively high-speed rail sounded like reckless science fiction.
02:21In the end, though, they discovered that they weren't going to suffocate, and the sheer practicality of going from A to B quickly and safely trumped anything else.
02:34But trains would soon shrink continents and fuel the Industrial Revolution.
02:38Transportation would never be the same again.
02:40Fast forward, and railroads reshaped the planet.
02:43Modern high-speed trains run faster than Lardner ever imagined.
02:47Today, the only choking involved with trains tends to involve bureaucratic red tape.
02:52California Governor Gavin Newsom has touted high-speed rail, but in a March interview with Bill Maher,
02:56he blamed the slow-moving process in part on eminent domain, which requires the government to reach compensation agreements with private landowners to buy and repurpose their land for public use.
03:07Number eight, television won't last, said radio hosts and film producers.
03:11When TV arrived, some folks thought it was just a noisy lamp.
03:15In the 1940s, major radio industry experts dismissed it as a passing novelty.
03:20In 1946, 20th-century fox head Daryl Zanuck is said to have predicted, quote,
03:26people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
03:30Spoiler, they didn't.
03:32Over the next few decades, television spread faster than a cold.
03:35Television unified the world in a way that it never had before.
03:40For the first time, instead of just hearing of what was going on someplace else, you could now see, live, what was going on half a world away.
03:48TV didn't kill radio or the movies, but it sure stole the spotlight.
03:53Television reshaped politics, culture, and entertainment in ways no one on the airwaves ever saw coming.
03:59The medium they wrote off as a fad is now something we binge, stream, and carry in our pockets.
04:05It isn't long before television takes over as the most popular form of entertainment in America.
04:11Number seven, the smartphone, a niche toy.
04:14Until it changed everything.
04:15In 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed off Apple's new iPhone.
04:22There's no chance, he scoffed, that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.
04:27The most expensive phone in the world, and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine.
04:35His reasons?
04:36No keyboard, no business appeal, and a whopping $500 price tag.
04:40Some experts thought it was a flashy luxury, a toy for Apple fans with money to burn.
04:46Every argument aged like milk.
04:48Within a few years, smartphones didn't just go mainstream.
04:51We think what we've done is to reinvent the phone and completely change what your expectations are going to be for what you can carry in your pocket.
05:02Alien observers could honestly say the smartphone conquered humanity.
05:06From American classrooms to remote villages in sub-Saharan Africa, these miniature computers are everywhere.
05:12For many, they've replaced cameras, maps, alarm clocks, landlines, even computers and TV.
05:18It's a pocket-sized device more powerful than the computer that put man on the moon.
05:22Intelligent, powerful, innovative, from the inside out.
05:28This is iPhone 16 Pro.
05:31Number 6.
05:32Nuclear power is pure fantasy.
05:34Until it wasn't.
05:35In the late 1920s, Nobel laureate Robert Milliken dismissed atomic energy as a childish bugaboo.
05:42You might think that it was always inevitable that we would be able to harness the energy inside the nucleus of atoms.
05:48But that was far from the case.
05:50He told the Chemist Club in New York that expecting usable energy from the atom was a completely unscientific utopian dream.
05:57Fast forward to 1933, and Ernest Rutherford, who had just split the nucleus, laughed at the notion.
06:04He insisted that anyone expecting power from atoms, quote, is talking moonshine.
06:08There was good reason for their pessimism.
06:11When Becquerel first observed radioactivity, he thought it was a phenomenon similar to phosphorescence.
06:16Even Albert Einstein weighed in, stating in 1934 that there is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.
06:25A decade later, America drops nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
06:29The age of the atom forced all the naysayers to recant.
06:32Instead, they had to shift their criticisms and focus on the potential of a nuclear Armageddon.
06:37First time in human history, we now were capable of our own destruction as a species.
06:45Number 5. Surgeons laughed at antiseptic methods, then infections killed thousands.
06:51In the mid-1800s, Joseph Lister suggested something wild.
06:55Maybe surgeons should stop waving pus-covered tools around like party favors.
06:59He thought that sterilization, which means getting rid of germs, could save lives.
07:05After reading about germ theory, Lister began sterilizing instruments and spraying carbolic acid in operating rooms.
07:12But many of his peers weren't impressed. Some mocked his ideas.
07:16People would say, there's absolutely no way that a tiny microscopic organism could possibly kill an organism as big as we are.
07:24Others flat out refused to believe invisible germs could kill a patient.
07:28One critic sneered that Lister's methods turned surgery into a, quote, rainstorm.
07:34Yet hospitals that adopted antiseptics saw mortality drop dramatically.
07:38Today, we scrub, sterilize, glove up and mask in every operating room on Earth.
07:43The guy they laughed at saved more lives than most of them could ever imagine.
07:47Lister had a huge impact on reducing deaths in surgery.
07:51That's why he's known to this day as the father of modern surgery.
07:57Number four. Who would want a computer in their home?
08:00Misjudging the PC boom.
08:02In 1977, Ken Olson ran one of the world's top tech companies.
08:07There's a place for everything. The PCs will pay. Part of it. Terminals, another part of it.
08:12Workstations, another part of it. Medium computers and large ones, other parts of it. There's a place for all of it.
08:17Then he face-planted. There was no reason anyone would want a computer in their home, he declared.
08:23Back in the 40s, IBM's Thomas Watson reportedly said, five computers would be enough for the whole planet.
08:30Spoiler, he was off by a few billion.
08:33They were two experts decades apart who couldn't have been more wrong if they tried.
08:37You're looking at a small portable computer called the IBM 5100. It's helping a lot of different people do their work more productively.
08:45By the 90s, computers were ubiquitous and the internet was bringing the world together.
08:49That's when Newsweek columnist Clifford Stoll dunked on it.
08:53The 90s, he said, were the pinnacle of hardware and software. It would never get any more portable or user-friendly.
08:59Today, he laughs at his own howler of a bad prediction.
09:02Is there a lesson to be learned? Yeah, probably.
09:07Number 3. Lord Kelvin said flight was impossible, weeks before the Wright brothers flew.
09:13Lord Kelvin wasn't just a brilliant scientist and scholar, he was the scientist of his time, president of the British Royal Society.
09:21During his lifetime, Thompson made an enormous contribution to the study and understanding of thermodynamics, electrodynamics, hydrodynamics, and geophysics.
09:31A mathematical genius, the man literally helped define the absolute temperature scale.
09:37So when he declared in 1895 that, quote, heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible, people listened.
09:43The problem, of course, was that he'd been proven wrong before a decade had passed.
09:47The 12-second flight proved that sustained, controlled, powered flight was, in fact, possible.
09:54Just eight years later, the Wright brothers lifted off at Kitty Hawk.
09:58Sadly, for Lord Kelvin's legacy, that wasn't his only whiff.
10:02In 1896, he also dismissed x-rays as a hoax, right before they revolutionized medicine.
10:09Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen discovered x-rays and changed the world.
10:13Just a short time later, our engineers developed the first x-ray tubes, specifically designed for medical use.
10:23As it turns out, even the hottest of hot shots can get scorched by technological revolutions.
10:28Number two.
10:29The stock market has hit a permanent high, right before the 1929 crash.
10:34Economist Irving Fisher was one of the most respected minds in America.
10:38He was a brilliant Yale professor.
10:39When he spoke, policymakers listened intently.
10:42His name and economic theory still show up in textbooks.
10:45So when he said that stock prices had reached a permanently high plateau, people believed him.
10:50All across the country, not just New York City, but in cities, in small towns, all across America, people were in love with the stock market.
10:59Sadly for Fisher, this prediction came in the fall of 1929, mere days before the utter collapse of the U.S. stock market.
11:06Black Tuesday wiped out billions in wealth.
11:09By the end of the crash, some stocks had lost over 90% of their value.
11:13Fisher himself lost both his own fortune and his credibility.
11:17He will go down in history as delivering one of the most spectacularly absurd predictions of all time.
11:23The lessons from the crash of 1929 are that history repeats itself, that human folly and greed are much stronger forces in financial affairs than reason and restraint.
11:35Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
11:40Online shopping will flop.
11:42Time magazine predicted online shopping back in 1966.
11:45They said it wouldn't catch on.
11:47Long ago in cyberspace, bold predictions were being made.
11:51By the end of the millennium, they said electronic commerce would be worth billions of pounds,
11:57and we'd all be doing our shopping via computers.
12:00But that was way back when the internet was young.
12:03Power poses are real.
12:05Even one of the authors of the original power posing study thinks she was probably wrong.
12:10Power poses are postures that we adopt when we feel really confident in power, powerful.
12:15So we expand, we take up a lot of space, just like other animals do.
12:19There will never be a bigger plane than the 247.
12:22A Boeing engineer said in 1933 that the 10-seater 247 would be the largest plane ever.
12:28The Boeing 247, its top speed of 200 miles per hour, will be 50 miles per hour faster than
12:36any other commercial airliner on Earth.
12:39The machine gun will end all war.
12:42Hero Maxim believed his deadly invention would make war impossible, not more terrible.
12:46You are now gazing upon three of the most unusual inventions of the 90s.
12:52The flicker films, the first machine gun, and the square derby.
12:57We can't learn anything further about astronomy.
13:00In 1888, astronomer Simon Newcomb said we'd learned all there was to know of the stars.
13:06This was owned by Simon Newcomb, an astronomer who later became one of the most prominent
13:10scientists in the United States.
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13:27Number 1.
13:29Smoking doesn't cause cancer.
13:31Doctors once said smoking was safe, or even healthy.
13:34For decades, the smartest people in the room said cigarettes were fine.
13:39Lucky's taste better, and for good reasons.
13:41First, lucky strike means fine tobacco.
13:44And then this fine, good-tasting tobacco is toasted to taste even better.
13:48Cleaner, fresher, smoother.
13:50In the 1930s and 40s, tobacco companies ran ads claiming doctors actually recommended their
13:56brands.
13:57Some even bragged that their cigarettes were physician-tested and less irritating to the
14:02throat.
14:03Medical journals ran cigarette ads.
14:05Health professionals endorsed them.
14:07One campaign had doctors choosing camels, quote, by a wide margin.
14:11More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette.
14:14Meanwhile, lung cancer rates were quickly exploding.
14:17By the time the truth caught up, it was too late for millions.
14:20Today, it's hard to imagine anyone not knowing the risks.
14:23But back then, your doctor would have lit one up right there in your hospital room.
14:27Because they know what a pleasure it is to smoke a mild, good-tasting cigarette, they're
14:33particular about the brand they choose.
14:35Who do you think was the wrongest genius in history?
14:38Let us know in the comments below.
14:40We've got great Windows Mobile devices in the market today.
14:44You can get a Motorola Q phone now for $99.
14:48It's a very capable machine.
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