In 1913, an entrepreneur “said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years.” For that accurate assessment of reality, he was prosecuted for stock fraud. A U.S. District Attorney claimed that, “based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to buy stock in his company.”

Among other things, this highlights the old adage that behind every great idea are a hundred people saying it can’t be done.