01-31-2024, 08:30 AM
As usual in cases like this, they give more importance to the predictions that became true than to those that did not.
1 - 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.... photographs will reproduce all of nature's colours."
The first colour photo was taken 20 years before he was born, so it was not part of the predictions, it already existed.
The first machine capable of transmitting images like a fax machine is from the 1880s, while radio telegraphy is from the 1890s.
2 - "Americans will be taller by from one to two inches."
Apparently, he got this one right.
3 - "Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn."
As said above, wireless communications already existed when this was published.
4 - "Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries of today."
Another one he got right.
5 - "There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America [the US]."
This one is wrong.
6 - "Vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants to grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of coloured light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early."
Electric light was already being used in greenhouses in 1900. I don't know if electric currents applied to the soil were ever used.
7 - "Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span."
This did not existed in 1900 but there were several people working on it, so it was not much of a prediction.
8 - "Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of today."
Calling today's tanks "huge forts on wheels" is an exaggeration, I don't think he was talking about something like them.
9 - "Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren."
Not really.
10 - "Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains one hundred and fifty miles per hour."
True.
I don't have time for the things he got wrong that are no that article and those that aren't. :)
1 - 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.... photographs will reproduce all of nature's colours."
The first colour photo was taken 20 years before he was born, so it was not part of the predictions, it already existed.
The first machine capable of transmitting images like a fax machine is from the 1880s, while radio telegraphy is from the 1890s.
2 - "Americans will be taller by from one to two inches."
Apparently, he got this one right.
3 - "Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn."
As said above, wireless communications already existed when this was published.
4 - "Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries of today."
Another one he got right.
5 - "There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America [the US]."
This one is wrong.
6 - "Vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants to grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of coloured light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early."
Electric light was already being used in greenhouses in 1900. I don't know if electric currents applied to the soil were ever used.
7 - "Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span."
This did not existed in 1900 but there were several people working on it, so it was not much of a prediction.
8 - "Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of today."
Calling today's tanks "huge forts on wheels" is an exaggeration, I don't think he was talking about something like them.
9 - "Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren."
Not really.
10 - "Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains one hundred and fifty miles per hour."
True.
I don't have time for the things he got wrong that are no that article and those that aren't. :)
