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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug Hart" data-source="post: 82009" data-attributes="member: 3721">Re: Listening Get TogetherIt wont work??? Crap !!! I guess we'll just scrap everything and quit then. Dangit... I thought it would work.In his 1842 book <a href="http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/comte/" target="_blank">The Positive Philosophy</a>, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the stars: "We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere." In a similar vein, he said of the planets: "We can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface."The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible in the run-up to the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17823976.100-first-flight-the-wright-brothers-and-the-invention-of-the-airplane-by-t-a-heppenheimer-and-other-books.html" target="_blank">Wright brothers' flight</a> is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", only to be proved definitively wrong just eight years later.On 29 December 1934, Albert Einstein was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying, "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable."Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them." -- Science Digest, 1948"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable tobreathe, would die of asphyxia."    -- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out oflocomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches?"    -- Quarterly Review, 1825"I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept theexistence of atoms and other such dogmas."   -- Ernst Mach (1838-1916)"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."   -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895"Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, ifnot utterly impossible."    -- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902"The resistance of air increases as the square of the speed and works asthe cube [of speed]....  It is clear that with our present devices thereis no hope of aircraft competing for racing speed with either ourlocomotives or automobiles."    -- William H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1910"As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."   -- Rear Admiral Clark Woodward, 1939"Since the 40-inch objective of the Yerkes refractor and the 200-inchmirror of the Palomar reflector have apparently reached the practicalconstruction limits for telescopes of their respective types, it isextremely doubtful if a greater light-gathering eye of either kind willever again be built."  -- A. Frederick Collins, 1946"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurdlength to which vicious specialization will carry scientists.  To escapethe Earth's gravitation a projectile needs a velocity of 7 miles persecond.  The thermal energy at this speed is 15,180 calories [per gram].  Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible"  -- A. W. Bickerton, 1926"I am bold enough to say that a man-made Moon voyage will never occur regardless of all scientific advances."   -- Lee De Forest, "the father of electronics""Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobodywill use it, ever.  It's too dangerous. . . it could kill a man as quickas a bolt of lightning.  Direct current is safe."    -- Thomas Edison"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered asa means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."    -- Western Union internal memo, 1876"Drill for oil?  You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."    -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill      for oil in 1859"No one will ever be able to measure nerve impulse speed."   -- Johannes Muller, German Physiologist, 1846"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from theintrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".    -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed      Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873"Everything that can be invented has been invented."    -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899Many, many things were thought to be impossible... until someone did it.</blockquote>

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