Predictions Quotes - Page 6

• The first real air-liner, carrying some five or six hundred passengers, will probably appear after or towards the end of the battle between fixed and moving-wing machines. And it will be a flying boat.

  Oliver Stewart

  Real, Moving, Air

  Oliver Stewart (1928). “Aeolus: Or, The Future of the Flying Machine”

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• The helicopter has never achieved much success and . . .may be classes with the ornithopter as obsolete.

  Oliver Stewart

  Class, May, Aviation

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• In less than twenty-five years . . . the motor-car will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it.

  Philip Gibbs

  Running, Years, Car

  Philip Gibbs (1928). “The Day After To-morrow: What is Going to Happen to the World?”

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• It is my contention that an agent ideal to the use of the scientific militarist, for both the air raid and the long distance bombardment is now in the process of development; that its eventual perfection is but a matter of time; and its use in warfare is certain to occur. I refer to the rocket. The perfection of the rocket in my opinion will give to future warfare the horror unknown in previous conflicts and will make possible destruction of nations, in a cool, passionless and scientific fashion.

  David Lasser

  Fashion, Distance, Future

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• My predictions are notably inaccurate

  Robert Caro

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• The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] . . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.

  Richard van der Riet Woolley

  Future, Believe, Space

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• A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

  Stephen Hawking

  Class, Two, Arbitrary

  "A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes". Book by Stephen Hawking, 1988.

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• Whatever happens, happens. I can't give you a prediction because Jim (Irsay) and I will sit down at some point and he'll get a feel for where I am and I’ll get a sense of what direction he wants to go. Right now, I have no idea.

  Peyton Manning

  Ideas, Giving, Want

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• Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Growth, Internet, Made

  "Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis: Meditations on Computer Systems Development". Book by Patrick Mcdermott, 2002.

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• I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Results, Sonnet

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.

  Metrodorus of Chios

  Space, World, Earth

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• I believe the new machine of the Wrights to be the most promising attempt at flight that has yet been made.

  Octave Chanute

  Believe, Machines, Flight

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• At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Spring, Men, Air

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• It is entirely impossible for man to rise into the air and float there. For this you would need wings of tremendous dimensions and they would have to be moved at three feet per second. Only a fool would expect such a thing to be realized.

  Jerome Lalande

  Men, Air, Wings

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• At sea let the British their neighbours defy —
  The French shall have frigates to traverse the sky.

  Philip Freneau

  Sea, Sky, Aviation

  "Poems on Various Subjects: But Chiefly Illustrative of the Events and Actors in the American War of Independence".

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• Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Journey, Wings, Gentleman

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1824). “Works”, p.314

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• I may be expediting the attainment of an object that will in time be found of great importance to mankind; so much so, that a new era in society will commence from the moment that aerial navigation is familiarly realised. . . . I feel perfectly confident, however, that this noble art will soon be brought home to man's convenience, and that we shall be able to transport ourselves and our families, and their goods and chattels, more securely by air than by water, and with a velocity of from 20 to 100 miles per hour.

  George Cayley

  Art, Home, Men

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• For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
  Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
  Saw the heavens fill with commerce, Argosies of magic sails,
  Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
  Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew,
  From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.

  Alfred the Great

  Rain, Twilight, Eye

  "Locksley Hall" l. 123 (1842)

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• In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the Moon, the planets, and the stars with the same facility, rapidity and certainty as we now make the ocean voyage from Liverpool to New York.

  Jules Verne

  New York, Stars, Ocean

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• Darius was clearly of the opinion
  That the air is also man's dominion,
  And that, with paddle or fins or pinion,
  We soon or late
  Shall navigate
  The azure, as now we sail the sea.

  John Townsend Trowbridge

  Men, Air, Sea

  "Darius Green and his Flying-Machine". Book by John Townsend Trowbridge, 1910.

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• In this age of inventive wonders all men have come to believe that in some genius' brain sleeps the solution of the grand problem of aerial navigation-and along with that belief is the hope that that genius will reveal his miracle before they die, and likewise a dread that he will poke off somewhere and die himself before he finds out that he has such a wonder lying dormant in his brain. We all know the air can be navigated-therefore, hurry up your sails and bladders-satisfy us-let us have peace.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Believe, Sleep

  Mark Twain, John C. Gerber, Terry Firkins (1983). “Tom Sawyer Abroad ; Tom Sawyer Detective”, p.180, Univ of California Press

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• And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.

  William Winwood Reade

  Future, Men, Land

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.514

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• I hold that in the flight of the soaring birds (the vultures, the eagles, and other birds which fly without flapping) ascension is produced by the skillful use of the force of the wind, and the steering, in any direction, is the result of skillful manoeuvres; so that by a moderate wind a man can, with an aeroplane, un- provided with any motor whatever, rise up into the air and direct himself at will, even against the wind itself.

  Louis Pierre Mouillard

  Men, Air, Eagles

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• To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.

  Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

  Distance, Moon, Rocks

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• To the possible enquiry as to the probable character of a successful flying machine, the writer would answer that in his judgment two types of such machines may eventually be evolved: one, which may be termed the soaring type, and which will carry but a single operator, and another, likely to be developed somewhat later, which may be termed the journeying type, to carry several passengers, and to be provided with a motor.

  Octave Chanute

  Character, Successful, Two

  Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

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