Customer Reviews

Predicting the Future: From Verne to Bill Gates

Problem: Malone devotes a "chapter" (or whatever they were) to the supposed shortsighted quote attributed to Charles Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899. We've all heard it: "Everything that can be invented, has been invented." Unfortunately, this is a completely bogus myth (though popular), and Duell never said anything of the sort, as even the slightest research into his life would have quickly revealed. Myth passed as truth. Lazy. Disinformation.

Problem: Malone attributes the conception of the fax machine to Jules Verne in his novel Paris in the 2oth century. He offers as evidence a passage from Verne's book: "photographic telegraphy, invented in the last century by ... Giovanni Caselli of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile form of any writing or illustration...". Amazingly, Malone mistook Professor Caselli for a Verne-invented fictional character. In fact, a real Caselli DID invent a working fax, a model which sent pictures from Lyon to Paris from 1865-70, starting before the publication of Verne's book. Patents for faxes go back to 1843. Lazy. Disinformation.