10 World-Changing Inventions People Thought Were Useless

1. Space Travel

"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere."The New York Times, 1936

In the past, about as many people have derided space travel, as have supported. Although, granted, we're not yet zooming about the galaxy in our lightships, we have at least proven that it is possible to get, not only a rocket, but a human off this godforsaken rock.

People thought that we simply did not have the power for it, and one kind scholar even ran the numbers:

"Let us critically examine the proposal. For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is 15,180 calories... The energy of our most violent explosive--nitroglycerine--is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible."W. A. Bickerton, Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Canterbury College, New Zealand, 1926

The difference between the critics and the visionaries, however, is that the former tend to use the word "never", whereas the latter tend to stick with "someday".

The lesson we can all hopefully take from history, is that we have achieved a lot more as a species by saying that things can be done, rather than dismissing the impossible before it has had the time to change the world.

"Space travel is utter bilge."Dr. Richard van der Reit Wooley, Astronomer Royal, space advisor to the British government, 1956

Sputnik orbited the Earth the following year.

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