Shittypedia

“Computers? In a Home? Whatever For?”

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” — Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977¹

Olsen was not a fool — he was one of the great computer pioneers of his century, which is precisely what makes this beautiful.² You are quite possibly reading this on a computer in your home. Or on a computer in your pocket, which would have required a second, sterner memo.

In fairness to Olsen, he later insisted he meant a computer controlling the whole household — lights, doors, temperature.³ Reader: we now call that a “smart home,” and we shout at it when it plays the wrong song.

1. Said at a World Future Society meeting. The Future Society. You can’t write this stuff.
2. The expert’s curse: knowing so much about what is, you become blind to what’s next.
3. This defense means he accidentally predicted the smart home while denying the PC. A double achievement.

The Label That Turned Down the Beatles

“Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.” — attributed to Decca Records, upon rejecting the Beatles, January 1962¹

On New Year’s Day 1962, four young men from Liverpool auditioned for Decca Records. Decca passed, reportedly explaining that guitar music was finished,² and signed a different band that auditioned the same day.³ The Beatles went on to sell more records than any act in the history of recorded sound.

We enshrine this entry not to mock one A&R man, but to honor a universal human experience: being handed the future, examining it carefully, and returning it as defective.⁴

1. The exact wording is disputed, as all legendary rejections are. The rejection itself is a matter of record.
2. In Decca’s defense, predicting 1960s music in the first hours of 1962 was genuinely hard. In their non-defense: it was the Beatles.
3. Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Lovely band. You see the problem.
4. Every one of us has a Decca moment. Most of ours just aren’t documented.

Heavier-Than-Air Flight: “Impossible,” Signed, The President of Science

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — widely attributed to Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895¹

Eight years later, two bicycle mechanics from Ohio flew.² Kelvin was among the most brilliant physicists who ever lived — absolute temperature is literally measured in his name — which is exactly why he’s here. The Almanac does not collect the errors of fools; fools are only wrong by accident.³ It takes true expertise to be wrong with confidence, in public, with credentials.

1. The attribution is debated by historians, which we note because our corrections page is real and our donkey is honest. His documented skepticism of flight, however, is not in question — he declined to join the Aeronautical Society, unimpressed.
2. Birds had been running the counterargument for 150 million years, unacknowledged.
3. Hodja said it first: only he who does nothing makes no mistakes. He said it while falling off the donkey.