For instance, there are numerous statements according to inventions that have become ridiculous nowadays. “When the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it and no more be heard of.” This statement of Professor Erasmus Wilson from the Oxford University was logically sound in 1878 when no electrical network was available. “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?” This question about the telephone by its inventor Alexander Graham Bell was equally sound in the 1870s without any communication network. And similarly the reasoning of the automobile pioneer Gottlieb Daimler was comprehensible in 1901: “The global demand for cars will not exceed one million—due to the lack of chauffeurs alone.” A different ...
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