Predictions for the year 2000

[ComplexNumber]

i thought this was an interesting article, considering that it was written in December 1900. here are a few random predictions:

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

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.


Prediction #14: Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measured but half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of a scented flower to another which is odorless. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.


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.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. 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. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.

[slimdog360]

cqx. muahahahhaaa

[MedivhX]

WoW! Many things are actually very, very accurate. I'm really surprised!

[Somenoob]

would be extremly strange if he would mention Ubuntu

[forrestcupp]

The c, x, and q thing is still coming, folks! Don't give up hope yet. It didn't make it into the 2000 version, but it's coming soon.

[fuscia]

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.

[%hMa@?b<C]

[saulgoode]

[corstar]

Geez, things go faster, more reliable and new inventions appeared, what a genius he was to predict that!

[Evnas]

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. 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.

As the world gets fatter...

Prediction #5: Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.

That one is also acurate with the introduction of maglev trains

Prediction #29: To England in Two Days. Fast electric ships, crossing the ocean at more than a mile a minute, will go from New York to Liverpool in two days. The bodies of these ships will be built above the waves. They will be supported upon runners, somewhat like those of the sleigh. These runners will be very buoyant. Upon their under sides will be apertures expelling jets of air. In this way a film of air will be kept between them and the water’s surface. This film, together with the small surface of the runners, will reduce friction against the waves to the smallest possible degree. Propellers turned by electricity will screw themselves through both the water beneath and the air above. Ships with cabins artificially cooled will be entirely fireproof. In storm they will dive below the water and there await fair weather.

This also isnt far from the truth, as its being explored how to build an underwater train from NY to London in basically a vacum tube, though allowing it to make the trip in hours, as opposed to days