In 1900, American civil engineer John Elfrith Watkins wrote an entertaining article in the Ladies' Home Journal - about what might happen in a hundred years. Now it turns out that he managed to describe cell phones, television, digital photography, reconnaissance planes, tanks, and more quite accurately.
John Watkins worked for the Saturday Evening Post, which was published by the same publisher as the Ladies' Home Journal.
The exact predictions are.
- Digital color photography. Watkins did not use the term "digital" or even roughly describe how computers work.
However, he was quite accurate in describing how people would use such cameras.
"Photographs would be transmitted by telegraph over any distance. If there is a battle in China in a hundred years, the most vivid moments of it will be in the newspapers in an hour... And the photographs would be transmitting real colors," the article said.
In Watkins' day, it would have taken at least a week for a photo taken in China to reach a newsroom in the United States, Nilsson notes. Photography back then was seen as an exotic rarity and color was still at the stage of scientific experimentation.
Yet, according to Patrick Tucker of the American non-governmental organization World Future Society, when talking about the long-distance transmission of images by telegraph, Watkins also predicted the advent of the Internet.
- Mobile communications. "Wireless telephone and telegraph networks will entangle the world. Any husband will be able to call from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to his wife's bedroom in Chicago. It will be as easy for us to call China as it is now for us to call from New York to Brooklyn," the author wrote in 1900.
At that time international telephone lines of such length did not yet exist, let alone wireless communications.
- tanks and planes. Although the first descriptions and even drawings of a tank were made by Leonardo da Vinci, John Watkins quite accurately described the use of "forts on wheels" in wars.
Such forts, he wrote, "would burst through open spaces at the speed of a modern express. At the same time, said the 1900 article, such units should operate on the principle of "modern cavalry".
He also described "flying machines that would be equipped with telescopes with a range of a hundred miles."
"Equipped with cameras, they would be able to take pictures of enemy positions at that distance. Such pictures - with resolution and dimensions as if they were taken across the street - would arrive on commanders' desks," the article said.
The Wright Brothers made their first controlled flight on a heavier-than-air vehicle in 1903. Spy planes capable of photographing at a great distance came much later.
And the first battle in the use of tanks occurred in 1916.
- Semi-finished products. "Ready-to-eat meals would come from establishments like modern grocery stores," Watkins wrote in his article.
The convenience foods sold in today's stores show just how right Watkins was. He did, however, believe that the utensils in which such food would be supplied would have to be returned to "grocery stores."
But he predicted that food would be stored in refrigerators for a long time, which is also quite consistent with modern reality.
- Greenhouses. "Vegetables will be grown much faster with strong electric light to replace sunlight," Watkins wrote.
At the same time, he said, in large glazed plantations with wires in the ground, winter could be turned into summer and night into day.
This prediction has partly come true, since most modern greenhouses do without electric heating after all.
But his predictions do mention the possibility of delivering food by air from distant countries where the crop is ripe, such as fruits.
- Television and webcams. "Man will be able to observe the whole world. Images of people and all sorts of things will be transmitted through cameras via electric wires to screens several thousand miles away," the article says.
This description fits well with today's live television broadcasts and even more so with the webcams that emerged at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.
- Air conditioners. "Cold air will come from special taps, and thus it will be possible to regulate the temperature in the house just as we now let cold or hot water out of the tap to draw a bath," Watkins wrote.
In his view, warm and cold air in the twentieth century would have to be supplied from special large stations - just like water or gas.
This was not the case, but the description of the very principle of indoor air conditioning is quite accurate in describing how modern split systems operate.
- Synthesizers. Watkins described a device that would allow musicians to perform works while at a distant location - signals would be transmitted by electricity and played in another city.
No such apparatus has been created in a hundred years, but the author writes that these "automatic devices would accurately reproduce the sound of the instrument.
This sounds quite similar to the description of a synthesizer - especially since, as Watkins writes, "devices would be added to the instruments that would enhance the emotional effect of the music."
- Giant Fruits. In his article, Watkins predicts the appearance of "strawberries the size of apples."
Although the author was overly optimistic about strawberries, larger varieties of fruits and vegetables were generally bred in the twentieth century.
- Superfast trains. "Trains will run at two miles a minute. And express trains will go 150 miles an hour," the 1900 article said.
100 years after the publication of the material, there are trains in the world that reach 240 miles per hour, although the average speed of conventional trains is much lower.
As for the record, it belongs to the French TGV train, which in 2007 accelerated to 574.8 km/h.