10 World-Changing Inventions People Thought Were Useless

4. Television

"Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946

Clearly, Darryl Zanuck has never seen Game of Thrones.

A common trend in the dismissal of important new inventions, is that the person doing the dismissing is often part of a rival industry. Sir William Preece did it with the telephone, Chaplin did it with cinema, and then Zanuck, who was involved in the movie business, did it with television. The lesson here is to underestimate your enemy at your peril.

"Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan."Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948

This flash in the pan has resulted in a world in which 99% of British households own at least one television, and the average person in the West will spend a total of 9 years of their life "staring at a plywood box". Not too shabby.