Everybody will Walk Ten Miles

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I appreciate your optimism, people of yesteryear.

Looking over them, I think they got barely 50% right.

Interesting that none of these ever predicted that magazines and newspapers would become nearly obsolete ;)

Also, I see I was promised apple-sized strawberries and raspberries. Alas.

imagine what we'll know tomorrow....

Theaetetus: Not a bad imagination, but a pretty poor hit rate. Still, 100 years is a tough span to guess.

That is what I was thinking.... this thread is green.... let's all make predictions here about 2110 and maybe someone will dig up this thread then and laugh at us.

/as they get this thread transmitted directly into their brains

Pretty good for 100 years ago. Also, I love the prediction for a series of tubes.

dletter: Theaetetus: Not a bad imagination, but a pretty poor hit rate. Still, 100 years is a tough span to guess.

That is what I was thinking.... this thread is green.... let's all make predictions here about 2110 and maybe someone will dig up this thread then and laugh at us.

/as they get this thread transmitted directly into their brains

The world will be largely uninhabitable since even geoengineering can't bring the temperatures more than 2 degrees above the pre-Industrial era. If we get fusion, things might not be that bad. If we don't, we'll be living in a fairly squalid world.

500 million people in the US - FAIL
The American will be taller - What a shocking prediction, people in 1900 were taller than people in 1800
There will be no C, Q, or X - FAIL
Hot and cold air from spigots - FAIL
No mosquitoes nor flies - FAIL
Ready cooked meal paragraph - FAIL
No food will be exposed - FAIL
Coal prediction - OK
There will be no street cars and cities will be free of all noises - FAIL
Photographs will be telegraphed - OK

I'm not doing them all, but he got more wrong than right. I'd say 80-20.

Walker: 500 million people in the US - FAIL
The American will be taller - What a shocking prediction, people in 1900 were taller than people in 1800
There will be no C, Q, or X - FAIL
Hot and cold air from spigots - FAIL
No mosquitoes nor flies - FAIL
Ready cooked meal paragraph - FAIL
No food will be exposed - FAIL
Coal prediction - OK
There will be no street cars and cities will be free of all noises - FAIL
Photographs will be telegraphed - OK

I'm not doing them all, but he got more wrong than right. I'd say 80-20.

I think you are being a bit too literal in your judging here.... remember, there was no "Home heating/cooling" systems in 1900 beyond throwing logs into the fireplace and running a ceiling fan if you were rich.... so, yes, we don't get it from "spigots", but, they were basically just predicting that by now we'd have some "automatic" way to regulate temperature in the home, which we certainly do now. Although, they predicted no chimneys, not predicting that people would just want them for show.

"Ready cooked meals".... um, isn't that just them predicting fast food? So, they basically got that one right.... remember, in 1900 you didn't even have the concept of the grocery store like we have today.

There really boned on the "noiseless city" though.

Walker: 500 million people in the US - FAIL
.

Fail at reading comprehension. It said 350m-500m and was pretty close. In 2000 it was 284m, today it is 312m which means he was pretty spot on. If it weren't for those pesky wars we might have made it.

dletter: "Ready cooked meals".... um, isn't that just them predicting fast food? So, they basically got that one right.... remember, in 1900 you didn't even have the concept of the grocery store like we have today.

That or microwaves. I gave that one a yes.

Walker: Ready cooked meal paragraph - FAIL

Burger King, Boston Market and Dominos (meal by food carriage section) would like an apology from you.

Air-Ships, Fortresses on Wheels- accomplished only a few decades later.
To England in Two Days- Try 8 hours.
Automobiles cheaper than horses - it looks to me like horses and cars share about the same price spread between "Used" and "New". Link

Women will openly serve in the Military

Wow, it got this one right.

Store Purchases by Tube- this kind of prediction usually involved sending the order form and money THROUGH the tube as well. Intertubes jokes aside, paypal + UPS is pretty much the same.

Those seem no better than any other predictions from that time... that is to say about 20% correct.

I still love reading this stuff.

She said strawberries as big as apples twice.

/She really likes strawberries as big as apples

Sybarite: Everybody will Walk Ten Miles

In a year.

Total.

Mostly all miles will be around the all-you-can-eat buffet steam trays.

This one took me from "Meh, stabs in the dark" to "Okay, someone put some thought into this":

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.

Considering the Wright brothers didn't get off the ground until 1903, this was pretty prescient. He figured there'd be some air travel but it wouldn't be the most prominent method. Cars are still the most popular for domestic travel & transporting freight via railroad, truck, or boat is still used more often than air.

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.

Not a bad prediction of TV. Considering that only rudimentary radio over long distances was premiered at the Chicago World's Fair in 1895, that's a pretty good extrapolation.

DarnoKonrad: "Cars will be cheaper than horses." Nope, but horses will only be worth their export value for slaughter.

Note that it was cheaper than horses were "today" (aka back then.) I'm not sure about the price of a horse, but you can get a beater car pretty cheap these days.

If you rank all the vegetation related ones into one category, its like 80% accurate...with a bit of imagination. Not bad.

At least they didn't predict flying horseless carriages or some other fantastical crap.

Theaetetus: Walker: 500 million people in the US - FAIL

I'd give him a partial on this one... He didn't say 500 million in the US, he said 350 million-500 million in "American and its possessions". There's currently 307 million in the US, Puerto Rico has another 4 million, and Guam and the rest total about a million. He thought there'd be more states/possessions, but even without them, we're pretty close.


Well, we did control the Philippines in 1900. That's another 94 mil right there.

buck1138: Walker: No food will be exposed - FAIL

Have you been to, oh I don't know, any store that sells food?

Again, I think that is someone not thinking about how food was sold in 1900.... most everything was basically in big barrels with a scoop, and you just told the store owner how much you wanted and he put it in some burlap sacks for you.

So, the concept of 99% of things being sold prepackaged in cans and boxes was still far off. So, yes, people still sell food that is "exposed" (produce, etc), but, the modern concept of a grocery store was basically "science fiction" at that point.