A Reddit user stumbled upon this wonderful piece of history: a December 1900 article from The Ladies' Home Journal by American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins predicting what the world of 2000 might look like (though the Reddit user erroneously identifies it as 1911/2011). Check out a full-sized version here or a text version here. Though this list has been floating around the internet here and there for awhile, it's still pretty fascinating. Watkins actually got a lot of things right, although unfortunately, we do still have flies, mosquitos and the letters C, X and Q.
Among the things he (mostly) got right:
- We are taller overall. The average height of Americans in 1900 was 67 inches; today, it's 69 inches.
- We do have ready-cooked meals (although we don't have pneumatic tubes to deliver them).
- Coal isn't primarily used for heating, and we do use digital thermostats to regulate temperatures in our homes.
- Digital photography means photos can be published an hour after they were taken.
- Some trains do travel 150 MPH or more.
- We have commercial airplanes, as well as tanks ("huge forts on wheels").
- Telephones and television do connect the world, enabling man to see distant scenes through "a giant telephone apparatus."
- Grand opera and music is "telephoned" into homes via music players.
Among the things he got very, very wrong:
- We're still quite reliant on the letter C, X and Q.
- Mosquitos, house-flies and roaches have decidedly NOT been "practically exterminated."
- We still have plenty of wild animals.
- Automobiles are not cheaper than horses.
- A university education may be free in Europe and other parts of the world, but alas, not here.
- We don't think strawberries are as big as apples, nor are peas as large as beets (except in Woody Allen's imagination).
- We still need to (mostly) swallow our drugs.
- There are no pneumatic tubes directly delivering goods into our homes.
