This classic black and white image comes from the comedy 9 to 5, which Dolly starred in in 1980 alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The film grossed over $103.9 million and cemented Dolly’s reputation as a household name.

Dolly released the song 9 to 5 to promote the film. It quickly became one of her most famous hits, winning an Academy Award nomination and four Grammy Award nominations, two of which she won: ‘Best Country Song’ and ‘Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.’

This princess pink satin look is totally ’80s and looks almost exactly the same as the dress Dolly wore to perform her classic, and by then world-famous, song “Jolene” on The Griffin Show in November of 1980.

This era marked Dolly’s transition from country gal to queen of pop music, although her singles appeared consistently in the country Top 10. Between 1981 and 1985, she had 12 Top-10 hits; half of them hit number one!

For a brief period, Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton were Hollywood’s hit couple. The small but mighty singer-actress and Rocky star are glad most people don’t remember the time when they joined forces in the disastrous country spoof Rhinestone.

The 1984 movie was panned by critics upon its release, however, Stallone didn’t care, later quoting, “The most fun I ever had on a movie was with Dolly Parton on Rhinestone.” Nonetheless, the soundtrack album gave Dolly Parton two top ten country singles, “Tennessee Homesick Blues” and “God Won’t Get You.”

This iconic image was taken for the cover of Dolly’s 1987 single “The River Unbroken,” which featured on her album Rainbow. One of her lower-ranking songs, it was Dolly’s last pop record before she returned to her country roots.

In the same period, Parton began her charitable work through her Dollywood Foundation. Even today, her literacy program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, mails one book per month to each enrolled child from the time of their birth until they enter kindergarten.

Dolly Parton met her manager Sandy Gallin in 1976 after making a guest appearance on The Mac Davis Show. She was impressed with him, saying, “He’s got taste and I got talent.”

Their 25-year business relationship included the formation of their shared film and television production company Sandollar Productions in 1985. Sandollar achieved many awards, including five Ace Awards for a variety of productions and an Academy Award for the documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.

This rare photo of Dolly looking bright and chirpy is actually a promo shot from the 1992 romantic comedy Straight Talk. She played a dance instructor who moved to Chicago in search of fame, alongside co-star Barnet Kellman.

Although the movie did well at the box office, grossing $21,202,099, it didn’t receive great reviews. The critics couldn’t get enough of Dolly’s charming performance, but the prevailing opinion was that the storyline was just too confusing and poorly written.

This rare photo of Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda was taken during the New York City premiere of their box office smash 9 to 5. The three forged a strong friendship on the set of the film.

These three gal pals prove that age is just a number. Fonda and Tomlin, both now in their 80s, have a hit Netflix show, Grace and Frankie, and Dolly is on tour, has a Netflix series, and is busy running her theme park empire.

A woman after our hearts, Dolly seemingly decided to spend the entirety of 1989 dressed head to toe in sparkles! The cover of album White Limozeen featured a similarly scintillating dress, cementing Dolly’s place as the nation’s dazzling diamond in the rough.

Always a follower of fashion and a fan of bold styles, Dolly once famously said, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” On the contrary, this late 80s outfit makes her look a million bucks!

This gorgeous portrait was taken outside of Dolly Parton’s tour bus on September 1st, 1977, while on tour in Detroit. It was Dolly’s first tour since dropping her partner and mentor, Porter Wagoner, and she was sharing a rocky new sound.

TIME correspondent Jean Vallely interviewed Dolly that year. The accompanying article described her audiences’ protectiveness over the singer, stating, “Country fans are music’s most loyal, especially to a singer who comes from a three-room shack in Tennessee.”

This rare 1980s photo was taken at an event to promote The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the 1982 adaptation of the 1978 Broadway musical of the same name, which starred Burt Reynolds alongside a buxom Dolly.

Although she famously said it was a nightmare to work with Reynolds, Dolly also pushed for a romantic storyline, saying, “Wouldn’t you feel like you wasted five dollars if you paid to see Whorehouse and you didn’t see me and Burt kiss?”

A happy looking Dolly hones a bit of a hippie vibe in this 1977 image. This look is far more relaxed than her 80s styles, with stunning soft curls, double denim, and a floral headband that feels very Woodstock.

1977 is considered by many to be Dolly’s breakthrough year, with her album Here You Come Again becoming her first million-seller, topping the country album chart and reaching number 20 on the pop chart. Yes, Dolly’s star was rising!

This stunning black and white photo of Dolly is dated 1966, and the hairstyle absolutely confirms this! It must have taken several bottles of hairspray to style this sky-high look. Either that or it’s a great wig!

In 1966, Dolly was just 20 years old but she was already a prolific songwriter. Her single “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” went to number six on the country chart, but it was recorded by Bill Phillips, with Dolly uncredited on harmony.

If one beehive wasn’t enough, here’s another rare photo of Dolly from the same era that proves she really has been wearing wigs her entire career! Some say she was dedicated to having the biggest hair in the business.

Around this time, country music entertainer Porter Wagoner offered Dolly a spot on his weekly TV show, replacing Norma Jean. Wagoner’s audience was reluctant to accept Parton, but they soon warmed to her after hearing her sing.

This extremely rare late 60s color photo shows Dolly and Porter Wagoner on the set of The Porter Wagoner Show. The on-screen chemistry between the pair was evident and fans embraced the duo, becoming the No. 1 syndicated show in America.

Each 30-minute episode featured performances by Porter, Dolly, and a special guest. The show was originally filmed in black and white but switched to technicolor around the same time that Dolly joined the gang.

This vintage photo shows Dolly alongside Porter Wagoner, whose show she worked on for seven years. They recorded and promoted several popular albums together, including Just the Two of Us and Together Always, to great critical acclaim.

Dolly left to pursue her own career, penning the song “I Will Always Love You” about her professional break from Wagoner. She played the song, covered by Whitney Houston many years later, for him as her way of saying goodbye.

The rarest of rare photos – Dolly without a wig! This rare photo is difficult to find anything out about, though it looks to be 1960s, based on her bright blush, lipstick, and eyelash to eyebrow eyeshadow.

She may be a country superstar, but Dolly is a homegirl at heart. Her worldwide smash “My Tennessee Mountain Home” is dedicated to her love of the simple life with her family, far away from the glitz and glamour.

A young and radiant Dolly is pictured here with her husband Carl Dean. Dean is an asphalt contractor, and although it may seem an unlikely pairing, the couple is still happily married, thanks to their mutual love and respect.

The pair first crossed paths in a laundromat in Nashville in 1964. For Dean, it was love at first sight. He revealed, “My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl’. My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.'”

This rare photo of Dolly Parton from a 1979 photoshoot shows the singer looking particularly buxom! Dolly has never shied away from comments about her surgeries saying, “I’m not like a real person. I love being artificial!”

She went on to say, “I think there’s a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real, but look so artificial at the same time. If I see something saggin’, baggin’ or draggin’, I’m gonna have it nipped, tucked or sucked.”

Dolly has always been the perfect combination of beauty, brains, and quick wit. A source of inspiration for women worldwide, she said, “I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.”

Dolly’s words of wisdom encourage others to look on the bright side, believe in themselves, and stick it out through the storm. “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

This photo of Dolly and a typewriter is taken from the 1980s film 9 to 5. There were a lot of women in the workplace by the 1980s, but the glass ceiling was very much intact as far as roles were concerned.

Women were usually relegated to administrative roles, which is reflected in the lyrics to the song “9 to 5,” “They just use your mind and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it!”

The photo shows Dolly Parton in another scene from the 1980 comedy 9 to 5. The film’s theme song took on a life of its own, becoming an anthem for all types of workers and unions.

Labor leader Karen Nussbaum described it as starting with pride – ‘Pour myself a cup of ambition,’ going onto grievances – ‘Barely getting by,’ and touching on class conflict – ‘You’re just a step on the bossman’s ladder,’ before ending with collective power.

This candid photo of Dolly, by photographer Gene Spatz, was first uncovered decades after it was taken when the photographer’s sister unearthed a box of photos Gene had taken of celebrities back in the 1970s and 1980s

Dolly, complete with a denim jacket and killer eyelashes, would have been in her early 30s. At this time, she was trying to break out of the country scene in Nashville and introduce her music to the rest of the world.

This glamorous photo was taken in February 1978 in Los Angeles as the album art for Dolly’s 20th studio album, Heartbreaker. The album was marketed to pop fans, and some of the tracks verged on disco which was hugely popular then.

The remix of “I Wanna Fall in Love” became a huge hit in nightclubs and the album stayed at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart for nine weeks. It was even certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association!

Dolly looks flawless in this fitted and flared jumpsuit! This rare image was used for the back cover of the UK pressing of her greatest hits album Best of Dolly Parton Volume 2, which was released in 1975.

The double vinyl opened with “Jolene” before continuing with 11 of her other strongest hits such as “I Will Always Love You” and “Traveling Man,” proving that by 1975, Dolly was already a hit with the Brits!

Dolly looked radiant in this photo from the 1977 Grammy awards, one of the first years the ceremony was televised. Dolly was there to sing, but she first stole the hearts of the audience with her gravity-defying big hair.

It wasn’t until the following year that the country singer got her first Grammy nomination, but she surely turned a few heads with this look! As Dolly once quipped, “The bigger the hair, the closer to God.”

Sylvester Stallone must have said something funny to make Dolly laugh like that! This rare shot is another from the 1984 Rhinestone era. The plot of the movie centered around Dolly teaching Stallone to sing like a true country star.

Stallone is not known for having a sweet singing voice. He’s more famous for kicking down doors and fighting bad guys in action movies like Rocky and Rambo, which is another reason why this casting was a strange choice.

This modern but lesser-known photo of Dolly shows her making her rapping debut on The Queen Latifah Show at age 67! The country legend opted for gold chains and a platinum afro and performed a rap she wrote for Queen Latifah.

“I wanna talk to you about the queen,” she rapped. “Now, Queen Latifah, she the queen of hip-hop, rap, TV, and screen. Now she the queen of her own hood, but I’m the queen of Dollywood!”

This 9 to 5 era shot shows Dolly sitting at the piano with none other than co-star Lily Tomlin. Then relatively unknown, the hilarious Tomlin is now a renowned comedian best know for her improvisation and observational stand-up.

You can still catch Tomlin on TV in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. Tomlin plays Frankie Bergstein, a woman recently separated from her husband of forty years. She received her first Emmy nomination in 2015 as a lead actress for the role.

Dolly recently shared this photo of herself in 2016 when out on tour and revealed one of her many hidden talents. Not only is Dolly dressed head to toe in rhinestones, but she’s tooting on a tiny bedazzled saxophone!

Dolly is quite the musician. Although she is known for her singing voice, she also plays several stringed instruments. In her concerts, she’s known to play acoustic guitar, electric guitar, 5-string banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, piano, and autoharp.

This holiday photo was taken as a promotional shot for Dollywood in 1987. Dollywood, co-owned by Dolly herself, opened as a small tourist attraction in 1961 and grew to become the biggest ticketed tourist attraction in Tennessee.

The theme park features amusement park thrill rides, traditional crafts, music from the Smoky Mountain area, and hosts a range of concerts and musical events each year. It is also the site of the Southern Gospel Museum and Hall of Fame.

So here’s to Dolly, our golden country songstress who inspires us with her uniqueness and talent! Dolly says, “The key to my success has always been that my desire to succeed has always been greater than my fear.”

“I’ve been scared to death about a lot of things, but then I think, ‘Okay, you gotta buckle up, girl. You’ve got yourself here, so get out there and just do it.’ And I just ask God to help me, and I follow that light.” Amen, sister!

It’s easy to make a prediction, but that doesn’t mean it’ll turn out to be true. Our daily predictions might disappear with time, but some people and their words have been etched in history forever. Bold statements about things like the internet and the television made by the likes of Bill Gates and The New York Times, we’ve compiled 40+ such predictions that totally missed the mark.

In 2004, Bill Gates famously declared that “two years from now, spam will be solved.” Well, cut to 2022 and it seems that spam still very much exists.

In reality, spamming is an even bigger problem nowadays — companies are able to obtain user data easily, and customers need to sign up with their email for everything. It seems that trends may come and go, but spam is forever.

American astronomer and author of the acclaimed novel The Cuckoo’s Egg, Clifford Stoll, once stated that he doesn’t “believe that phone books, newspapers, magazines, or corner video stores will disappear as computer networks spread.”

While you might still find these things in small towns and cities, they have more or less disappeared. Instead, streaming sites and Google have largely replaced these communication mediums.

Today, there are various filters and apps that show us how we might look in 30 years, all by aging a photo that you already have. But once upon a time, it was magazines that started this trend. Apparently, FourFourTwo magazine got it all wrong!

In 1998, they predicted that footballer David Beckham would lose most of his good looks by 2020. Suffice to say, the 47-year-old legend looks as good as he did two decades ago — even better, actually!

Humans aren’t perfect creatures, and that’s okay. Even Nobel Prize winners make mistakes. Still, we’re sure Paul Krugman is kicking himself over the wildly inaccurate prediction he made back in 1998, considering that the internet has basically taken the world by storm.

With social media platforms and apps — like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter — users can connect with people from all over the globe. So, while most people may not always have valuable things to say to each other, that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped talking or posting!

When Barry Cunningham told J. K. Rowling that she’d never make money off her children’s books in 1996, he didn’t know that he would be one day eating his own words — on an international scale. Thankfully, Bloomsbury Books ended up publishing the books despite Cunningham’s doubt and it’s safe to say that the publishing house is all the better for it.

The Harry Potter series spurred films, companion books, merchandise, Harry Potter-themed areas in Disney World, and more. Today, no matter what generation you belong to, you’ve heard the name at least once.

Bill Gates might have been one of the people who made computers what they are today, but like every other human, this genius has also made some pretty inaccurate predictions.

In 1996, Bill Gates disapproved of author Terry Pratchett’s theory of how the internet would one day be responsible for spreading fake news. As we’ve all experienced, though, Pratchett’s theory is one of the biggest drawbacks of the internet and the news found online.

Privacy has become a joke in today’s digital age. Aside from the fact that we’re very quick to provide websites and social platforms with our personal information, our phones also listen to our every word. Have you ever scrolled through Instagram when you’ve noticed an ad for a product that you had just been telling your friend about? Sorry to break it to you, but that’s no coincidence.

Clifford Stoll had a little more faith in humanity and believed that one’s privacy would always be protected. He also believed that the cost of getting information would be very high. Well, we all know that’s not the case anymore.

At the turn of the century, Daily Mail printed a piece in its newspaper, denouncing the internet and stating that it may be a passing fad for the general populace.

Ironically, the publication has a huge internet presence today, owning everything from a website to a flourishing Instagram account. To be fair, not many people foresaw the scope of the World Wide Web and how one day, it would become as dominant as it is.

Erik Sandburg-Diment was a well-known name in the tech world during the ’80s. The software and tech columnist was a regular writer for The New York Times. However, a lot of his articles have come back from the archives to be examined by the netizens of today.

One of the writer’s predictions was that no matter how cheap machinery becomes, it would never become a part of a calming experience like fishing. Well, we all know how wrong that one was considering that almost every individual nowadays has a smartphone attached to their hip.

Even the people responsible for bringing about change in the technological world have made mistakes when making predictions about where it’s going.

Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel, infamously said that the idea of a personal communicator device in every pocket is a “pipe dream driven by greed.” This statement, made in 1992, turned out to be far from the reality we know today.

There are some people who believe that humanity is an endless pit of selflessness and goodness. For those people, the internet held up a mirror and said, “That’s just not true.”

One such person was internet expert John Allen, who predicted that the internet would be a singularly good place — as people’s “moral code and internal rules would stop people from doing horrible things online.” Sadly, this isn’t true — and for every good internet user, there’s a cyberbully who’s looking to spread toxicity. Let’s put a stop to cyberbullying!

It turns out that astronomer Clifford Stoll was wrong about many things regarding the internet, but no prediction of his was as wrong as the one he made about online shopping. In a nutshell, he called it a dead end.

Today, people would rather invest in an online store than head to a shopping mall. Humans are turning towards online shopping more and more these days, and this phenomenon was only magnified during the pandemic.

In 1999, a German publication made a prediction that space would be a fully functional colony by 2010, with high-rise buildings and humans traveling using a jetpack. Looks like The Jetsons was more influential than the makers imagined it to be.

Since we’re all still very much on the ground, suffice to say that it hasn’t happened. However, humans are very close to space tourism becoming a possibility. So, who knows — maybe by the next century, there might actually be people living in space.

In 1996, Wired Magazine raised its doubts and outright challenged Apple regarding its hardware, stating that the brand was out of the game and couldn’t compete with the other gadget makers. Cut to 2022, Apple is the leading technological brand that has revolutionized the way the world looks at gadgets.

The iPod changed the way we listen to music forever. After all, who can ever forget the iconic moment when Steve Jobs pulled the iPod out of his pocket and turned the entire industry on its head?!

The idea of clones has been around for a very long time, thanks to sci-fi movies and books. And many people have bought into the idea of it.

Writer Amy Tao of Amarillo Daily News made a prediction in 1998 that cloning humans and animals would be commonplace by the year 2018. Even though science has made immense progress, human cloning is still possible only in fiction.

The progress made in the medical and scientific field has certainly raised the life expectancy of people by a lot, but we still haven’t been able to reach the prediction of futurist Ray Kurzweil — who predicted that, by 2019, we’d all be able to live over a hundred.

The health bug has bitten everybody, and people are opting to eat cleaner and healthier than ever. But, there are also many more burger places on every corner so, life expectancy after the next 30 years can go either way.

Apple wasn’t always as smooth sailing as it is today. The company started off strong, but soon fizzled out in the late ’90s, before becoming what it is today.

Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos prematurely stated that the story of Apple Computers was an American tragedy, amongst other things. Today, not only is the brand a visionary in and of itself — but it’s also the first thing that pops up when you Google Apple instead of the fruit. Talk about domination.

Public figures, especially when representing a country, should refrain from making extremely opinionated statements. For instance, take this one prediction made by Ines Uusuman, the Swedish Minister of Communications.

According to her, the internet was just a temporary fad and wouldn’t last long in the world. To be fair to Uusuman, she wasn’t the first or the last person to cast apprehensions about the World Wide Web in the late ‘90s.

In 1988, the Los Angeles Times magazine published a special prediction issue where they wrote about what life would be like in 25 years’ time.

According to the publication, housing would be scarce. They also stated that money would have barcodes in it to avoid corruption and crime. In today’s world, not only is corruption rampant, but there’s also a surplus of empty houses. There’s no money to buy them, though.

Cars are an invention that may seem commonplace to today’s generation, but just about a century ago, it was still a doubtful idea.

In 1903, the President of Michigan Savings Bank warned Henry Ford’s lawyer that putting money in cars was a waste — and that horses were the answer to the future. Today, cars are for day-to-day use and horses are the exception.

We can all be thankful that John Philip Sousa’s 1906 prediction about music turned out to be wrong. According to the composer, the fact that machines were invented to play music in people’s homes was terrible.

He believed that this would lead to a loss of musical ability, as people would be able to listen to music without having to learn to play. However, the opposite has turned out to be true considering that more and more and more musical people have emerged over the years.

Banker JP Morgan is a well-known figure in history — not just in the world of finance but also in science as he invested heavily in Edison’s dreams of electricity. In fact, he financed General Electricity.

However, none of this would have come to play if Morgan had listened to his father, esteemed banker Junius Morgan, who was doubtful about the bulb and its power to give the world light, even going as far as to call it a fad.

In 1950, Dorothy Roe — a writer for Associated Press — claimed that based on scientific evidence, all women would be six feet tall by the year 2000. 22 years late and we can safely say that she was wrong.

Roe’s claims were based on the assumption that the Amazonian proportions of the women will be a result of the perfect balance of proteins, minerals, and vitamins. Women, as compared to 1950, are taller on average today… but they’re far from achieving the six feet average.

Every person alive in the ‘90s knows about Y2K, a.k.a. Year 2000 bug or Millennium Bug — a problem in the coding of computerized systems that was projected to create havoc in computers and computer networks around the world at the beginning of the year 2000. However, there was no massive computer glitch on January 1st, 2000.

Still, the entire thought caused mass hysteria in the US. Two decades later, the Y2K era has become a running joke, as people remember those who took the prediction way too seriously, in that they made shelters and stocked up on supplies.

Offline versus online shopping is a debate that never gets old, but over time, the points have racked up pretty high in online shopping’s favor.

Not everybody was always such a believer in this, though. In 1966, Times made a prediction that remote shopping would flop, as women like to venture out in the name of shopping and actually feel the merchandise before buying. We can all hear Mr. Bezos laughing all the way to the bank as we write this.

2012 was a year of delights — the Olympics were hosted in the UK, plus the world got both The Avengers and The Dark Knight. But, it was also the year of chaos due to a prediction.

According to the Mayan calendar, December 21st, 2012 was the end of the first great cycle, which the world believed to be the end of the calendar and the world itself. There was even a movie titled 2012 that featured an apocalypse descending the world.

Today, Halley’s Comet is a phenomenon that people make an entire event of. People throw parties and get together to see the magic once every 76 years approximately.

But in 1910, the nearness of the comet created panic amongst the citizens, many of whom made predictions that it would destroy the planet. Headlines turned morbid, and people went into full savior mode, with some people in Oklahoma even making sacrifices to stop it.

Stocks are a brave man’s game. Irving Fisher, a noted 20th-century economist, made many important additions to his field like the Fisher equation. But, one prediction destroyed his credibility entirely.

Just days before the Wall Street crash of 1929, Fisher claimed that the stocks were at an all-time high. After the crash, he tried to save face by backtracking but by then the damage had already been done — to his reputation and the market.

It’s impossible to imagine life without televisions in today’s world, but in 1946, people had very little faith in the small box.

Studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck was especially vocal in his apprehensions, predicting that TVs won’t be able to hold onto the market after the first six months. Thankfully, his words turned out to be wrong and television continued to flourish to a point that today, we basically travel with a TV in our pocket!

When you look back upon them, some predictions seem downright bizarre, like the one made by Arthur Summerfield in 1959. The US Postmaster General is famous for stating that soon, mail would be delivered by guided rockets.

The US Post Office did indeed test Rocket Mail the same year as the statement but sadly, it was the first and the last of it. The world never saw rocket mail deliveries, and we are still making do with good old delivery men and women at our doorstep.

Everybody made predictions about the internet during the late ‘90s. But, nobody owned up to their mistakes as memorably as Robert Metcalfe did. The technological genius infamously stated in a magazine back in 1955 that the internet would soon collapse catastrophically in 1996.

He also promised to eat his words if he was wrong. When he was proven wrong in 1997, he proceeded to stay true to his words. During his keynote speech at the WWW International Conference, he blended the page of the magazine with the quote and ate it in front of a live audience!

We all know about the tragedy that was the Titanic, all thanks to James Cameron. But, the luxury passenger ship actually had a lot of promise before it sank. The ship’s captain, Edward J. Smith, had so much faith in his ship that he even revealed he couldn’t fathom any disaster befalling the vessel.

President Phillip Franklin of White Star Line, the company that produced the Titanic, boasted that the ship was unsinkable. Well, sadly, we all know how that turned out…

The Beatles weren’t always as popular as they were in the ’60s — and even today! Though the band has since achieved iconic fame, the boys’ music was bad-mouthed a lot before it found success.

Music Director of The Ed Sullivan Show, Ray Bloch, stated that he gave the band a year tops. Decca Records rejected them and National Review founder William F. Buckler described their music as unbelievably horrible. To those who didn’t understand the magic back in the day, all we can say is “let it be…”

Elon Musk is a huge Mars fan today, but even in the ‘90s, a lot of people dreamt of setting foot on the planet. In 1996, the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council claimed that NASA would make it possible for humans to land on Mars by 2018.

Though we haven’t managed to quite set foot on the red planet, we’ve landed eight unmanned spacecraft on its surface.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil was another man who predicted that the paper book industry would be dead by the end of the 20th century, as everything of importance will be scanned.

Even though there has been a decline in the revenue of the book publishing industry since 2014, the US still saw a sale of nearly 675 million books in 2018. With such high numbers, we don’t see the paper book industry completely going out of business anytime soon.

Apple first burst into the scene with their computers. It was more than a decade later that they launched their trailblazing iPhones. However, not everybody was convinced that a computer company could successfully launch a phone.

David Pogue of The New York Times wrote an article in 2006, in which he stated that the company would probably never come out with a cell phone. Barely a year later, Apple proved him wrong by launching its first iPhone. Since then, it has sold more than two billion handsets worldwide.

Twitter didn’t always have the reputation of being the hotspot for debates. Once upon a time, it was considered to be a tool for illiterates by acclaimed science fiction writer Bruce Sterling.

In 2006, The New York Times journalist proclaimed that Twitter didn’t have the scope to be a place where intellectuals would flock to. Now, only if he could say the same in 280 characters or less, the most intelligent of the netizens might actually come to fight back.

It seems that even inventors have little to no faith in their inventions sometimes. Like Marty Cooper, who’s credited with inventing the cell phones, but has made a statement talking about his doubt.

Cooper stated that cell phones would never replace local wire systems, as they could never be cheap enough! Today, almost everybody has one in their pockets and with technology being what it is, there’s a price range that suits everybody — from a pauper to a prince.

In 1959, IBM commented told the founders of Xerox that photocopying has no long-term market scope, hence there was no reason for production on a large scale. According to IBM, the potential was only for 5,000 machines in the entire world.

Xerox, in actuality, went on to become synonymous with photocopying, and its name has since spread to all corners of the world. Ironically enough, IBM joined the photocopying game themselves soon after.

The Chairman of Viacom and CBS didn’t doubt the television, but he was skeptical of how far its reach could spread. In 1994, Sumner Redstone made a prediction that there would never be as many as 500 channels available for surfing.

Redstone’s words, of course, haven’t turned out to be true as we are surrounded by so much content. He probably didn’t take into account how even the sky is no longer the limit for humans.