DID I SAID THAT?



Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
    -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
    -- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.
    -- The editor-in-charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

But what ... is it good for?
    -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
    -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

So we went to Atari and said 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.'  And they said 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.
    -- Apple Computer Inc founder, Steve Jobs, on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
    -- Bill Gates, 1981

Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, you will not enjoy the luxury of a computer in your own home.
    -- Edward Yourdon, 1975

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change. (Emphasis mine)
    -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers

DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any application needing more.
    -- Microsoft, 1980

Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM which is more than any application will ever need.
    -- Microsoft, 1992



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