Predictions of the Year 2000

[Hans Deventer]

from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm

Quite interesting.

[Roland Hearn]

That was a great read. It is always so hard to foresee the future because things develop unexpectedly and have massive impact. Flight was one of those things. The internet is another.

[Dennis M. Scott]

Good read. Thanks, Hans.

It has been the opinion of a caustic few that you have too much time on your hands. We've noticed that in the Netherlands people are able to spend a lot of time on the internet. That's just good fortune.

Now, however, you have pushed it too far. I don't think I know anyone else who has the time to be reading achived magazine articles from over a hundred years ago. Occasionally some of us will pick up a Herald of Holiness from that long ago, but how many of American men will just happen to be looking at a Ladies Home Journal more than a century back? You're amazing! Your ability to multi-task in lauguages other than your heart language befuddles us of inferior and limited senses. We are fortunate to know and love you!

[Ryan Scott]

I was amazed at how close some of those were, although I really wish pneumatic tubes were in greater use. Those things are just cool.

[Hans Deventer]

Now, however, you have pushed it too far. I don't think I know anyone else who has the time to be reading achived magazine articles from over a hundred years ago.

:basic05 I don't have that time, Dennis. It was a link I found in a news bulletin of Network Administrators under the "off topic" header.

[Edith K. Thurmond]

from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900


The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. He must have been the forerunner of people like Faith Popcorn, etc., in our generations. This man was so good at his predictions.

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Ha, ha, ha, ha!Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”
Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare. He never could have envisioned present-day Dallas or Houston traffic nor the cost of gasoline.
Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. It used to be but is not at present. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling. If only this were true there would not have been a 'ugly fat American' thread. :)
Prediction #4: Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises. Sure! This one really missed it, especially about the noise.
Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. True if one purchases a really OLD used car. Horses are expensive! The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today. Really cute! Exceptions to the example can be found, though.
Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth. Incredibly limited view of the use of those airships.


Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly. Smiles and laughs galore. He missed it here in a big way.
Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second. Smiles again here.
Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Too bad all the parents who empty their savings and mortage their futures for children's education never heard of this. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. We would probably do better if "copied after the Latin." Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. They would have to be illegal aliens or from a minority group to even qualify for this. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. Wishful thinking.The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools. This paragraph is really off target with the last sentence contents being almost non-existent.
Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”. Last Wed. night, I received a telephone call from four friends who were riding in a vehicle in the middle of the jungle in Ecuador. The connection was as clear as next door. They were getting ready to get into a canoe and paddle a ways ending up close to the border of Columbia. Their description of what they were seeing was so real and beautiful. It was (almost) as if I were there with them. Technology is incredible!
Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house. Now this is a great idea! However, it would not really work due to the absence of women at home during the day. They are all out working elsewhere.

Prediction #23: Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens.Fast foods? These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance. He pretty much describes the U.S. here.

Prediction #25: Oranges will grow in Philadelphia. Missed it here. Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. True and truer.

Prediction #27: Few drugs will be swallowed or taken into the stomach unless needed for the direct treatment of that organ itself.Missed that one. Drugs needed by the lungs, for instance, will be applied directly to those organs through the skin and flesh. Transdremal drugs are making an 'entrance.' They will be carried with the electric current applied without pain to the outside skin of the body. Becoming more common.
Prediction #28: Rats and mice will have been exterminated. Oh, ho, ho, ho. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse.

Prediction #29: To England in Two Days. Wow, he never could have envisioned the Concorde or any military SST vehicle. The Concorde was an incredible way to get to Europe and back.


Thanks for the link, Hans. It was a fun read.

[Joanne Vergin]

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Sounds like the internet to me.

[Billy Cox]

from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm

Quite interesting.

It was quite interesting to note how many items they got right.

But then they thought that the automobile would drive the horse to extinction...just like the VCR bankrupted all of the movie theaters.

[Jim Franklin]

So what might be the predictions of 2000 for 2001? One ofd the definitions of Geography is "what is where and why and what difference does it make and what ought to be." Some Planning Geographers try to describe "what ought to be" by futuristic studies. I have delved into that a bit but not to any great extent but it is really an interesting area of study. Some years ago our local newspaper asked readers to send in predictions and I predicted the small pool with pumps so that you could swim against an artificial current much as a treadmill for a runner. There are several companies now producing this product.

[Jerry Frank]

[SIZE=2][FONT=Arial]Prediction #29: To England in Two Days. Wow, he never could have envisioned the Concorde or any military SST vehicle. The Concorde was an incredible way to get to Europe and back.

[/COLOR]


Actually Edie, this one comes almost bang on to hydrofoil boats which are not used to cross the ocean but which was used until recently to cross the English Channel on a daily basis. There is a picture of one near the bottom of this page http://www.pride2.org/NewPrideSite/Pride2/Logs/082300.html


Jerry

[Joel Merrill]

Good read. Thanks, Hans.

It has been the opinion of a caustic few that you have too much time on your hands. We've noticed that in the Netherlands people are able to spend a lot of time on the internet. That's just good fortune.

Now, however, you have pushed it too far. I don't think I know anyone else who has the time to be reading achived magazine articles from over a hundred years ago. Occasionally some of us will pick up a Herald of Holiness from that long ago, but how many of American men will just happen to be looking at a Ladies Home Journal more than a century back? You're amazing! Your ability to multi-task in lauguages other than your heart language befuddles us of inferior and limited senses. We are fortunate to know and love you!

I know people who have every National Geographic and Readers Digest magazine ever printed. I have a bunch of old Sports Afield and Guns & Ammo magazines in the attic that are going to the dump the next time I go there.

When us kids were in school in the 1960's, my grandfather gave us a set of Encyclopedia Britannica's from 1925. He thought us kids could use them. I remember seeing an article about traveling to the moon in the future. They had a drawing of a giant biplane with a fuselage the size of the Titanic and dozens of regular sized engines all along the wings. They must not have known that there was neither air nor gravity in space. Airplanes in 1925 only flew 100 to 150 mph. It would be a long trip. As soon as we got home, Dad threw them away.

Joel