
Ladies Home Journal (1900) Predictions for 2000 - russell
http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm
======
edw519
Wow, what a great read! It was interesting how many things they accurately
predicted without (obviously) knowing what they would be called. All of these
ideas were presented with none of these words:

    
    
      immigration
      baby boom
      Panama Canal
      tract housing
      agribusiness
      physical education
      Acela high speed train
      airplanes
      rockets
      space shuttle
      television
      fax
      internet
      satellite TV
      genetic  engineering
      welfare
      cell phones
      radio
      Moog synthesizer
      air conditioning
      fast food
      xrays
      ultrasound

------
mmastrac
"Prediction #10: 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. American
audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the
coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The
instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be
connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound
in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to
boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be
heard to utter words or music when seen to move."

~~~
henrikschroder
I wonder why he missed storage of information. Is that so much harder to
imagine than transmitting it directly?

~~~
mmastrac
I think the big leap here for him was seeing live events vs. pre-recorded
films. When these predictions were written, silent films would have been
commonplace and live radio broadcasts weren't around. News would have been
distributed via newspaper, sent world-wide by telegraph.

~~~
joezydeco
But the phonograph was around for 20 years or so. So there _was_ some
information storage, just not the concept of mass reproduction and
distribution.

~~~
mmastrac
The phonograph and newspaper were forms of mass reproduced, widely distributed
storage though. Most of their media at the time would have been from
persistant storage of some form, created once and sold many times over
(newspaper, records, player piano rolls, etc).

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seldo
Pretty much spot-on apart from the strange (and repeated) prediction of giant
fruits and vegetables (I guess you could say the green revolution provided
similar quantity, if not on a per-fruit basis) and the failure to predict the
popularity of air travel.

~~~
noonespecial
My favorite swing and miss:

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.

More or less a hit on the prevalence of gyms, total miss on the ramifications!

~~~
andreshb
Not as much a miss as you portray, considering that: 1\. It is mandatory at
least one Physical Education class in public high schools (at least in
Florida), and if I remember right, middle school as well.

2\. Not only do colleges and universities have complete gymnasiums, many of
them have enormous staudiums and fields.

The one miss that I do agree with is "A man or woman unable to walk ten miles
at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."

~~~
nfnaaron
My son goes to a public middle school in Colorado, and each student only has
Physical Education for half the year. They also only study foreign language
for half a year. The two halves of the student body trade at mid-year. The
academic schedule is too busy to allow for all-year PE and FL.

I expect PE to be uncommon some time soon-ish. Besides, PE is too hard when
you're fat.

------
ramanujan
> "He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will
> reside in the suburbs"

Clearly a fake article. Language is anachronistic. Also life expectancy in
1900 was not 35 years, but closer to 50:

<http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html>

~~~
mmastrac
Here's a scan of the original article, found by Googling the title:

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/RiR7L_dyCLI/AAAAAAAAAd...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/RiR7L_dyCLI/AAAAAAAAAdU/2COTRQtZAk8/s1600-h/Ladies+Home+Journal+Dec+1900+paleofuture+paleo-
future.jpg)

This comment says that it's available on microfilm:

[http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-may-happen-
in-...](http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-may-happen-in-next-
hundred-years.html?showComment=1197791820000#c5523051432288129428)

Here's a source article with more information:

[http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/next-hundred-
years-...](http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/next-hundred-years-
milwaukee-herold-und.html)

~~~
ramanujan
My bad. Might be the only time my Snopes radar was off -- struck me as similar
to some of those "faux old" articles.

Anyway, I'd delete my original comment, but evidently too much time has
elapsed.

Serves me right for writing "Clearly" :)...Hopefully at least the life
expectancy link in it was informative.

~~~
mmastrac
It was informative still- I was surprised that the average lifespan was only
45. It does make some sense I suppose: penicillin was still thirty years away
and there wasn't a single vaccine yet.

~~~
sabat
The vaccine had been invented more than 100 years prior to 1900. I'm not sure
how wide-spread they were at that point, but the vaccine was invented some
time in the 18th century. Antibiotics -- you're right, not discovered yet in
1900.

~~~
mmastrac
I stand corrected. Wikipedia lists some interesting proto-vaccines in the
1800s and earlier (including one for smallpox). There was a major increase in
the availability and breadth of vaccines in the 1900s, but a lot of groundwork
was already laid before that. Thanks for the correction.

------
10ren
#2 ... He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present

I didn't like mortality rates were that bad in 1900 USA.

~~~
brianm
Horrible chart junk, but credible domain (
[http://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc02_asm_keynote/sl...](http://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/rc02_asm_keynote/sld028.htm)
) puts life expectancy in 1900 around 45 years.

------
tpyo
"Prediction #16: ... Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the
newspapers."

Language varies too much and too quickly. Wasn't that why we adopted spelling
in the first place?

~~~
berntb
A spelling reform for the English language was probably the craziest
prediction... :-)

Some languages, like Swedish and Finnish, had spelling reforms in the 19th
century and are (more or less) trivial to pronounce from the spelling.

Today, it would be much, much harder to do a really big spelling reform even
for Swedish which should be a fraction of the problem size for English. For a
few generations you'd have to teach people to read/write _both_ spelling
standards. In the 19th century Sweden, most people only read a couple of
religious books (they had to).

A spelling reform might be easy to do in a generation when the e-books have
taken over. Just use automatic filters (not real translations -- grammar is
the same) for English spelling standards in office programs, web browsers,
etc.

------
pbhjpbhj
Article editors will be as lax as today ... #13 == #26

------
zenocon
"The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A
penny will pay the fare." Ha! That very well may have been true if we didn't
wreck our economy with fiat currency.

~~~
mattvanhorn
What's a 1900 penny worth today? My commute is only a couple of bucks - with
inflation considered, it might be close.

