“Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …”
A U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913

The quote above is from this list of equally amusing failures to predict the success of new technology.

Aside from the slightly frightening confirmation that simply being too forward-thinking can land you in trouble with the law (Galileo had similar problems), the list also highlights another uncomfortable truth.

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