Not quite true. I can think of two well funded people in 1995-2000 who either believed (or implied to funders) that scalable quantum computing was plausible wi

Not quite true. I can think of two well funded people in 1995-2000 who either believed (or implied to funders) that scalable quantum computing was plausible within 10 years. But those people were outliers. You're correct that it was an uncommon view, and mainstream consensus in the field was that it was many decades away. The situation today is certainly very different, and people seem much more optimistic.