"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communications. The device is inherently of no value
to us."
-An 1876 internal memo at Western Union, responding to Alexander
Graham Bell's offer to sell them his patent on the telephone for
$100,000
"The talking telegraph is a beautiful thing from a scientific
point of view. . . but if you look at it in a business light, it is of no
importance."
-Elisha Gray, who invented the telephone independently and
filed his patent application a few hours after Alexander Graham Bell
"[The telephone's] an amazing invention, but who would ever want
to use one of them?"
-Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United
States
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