Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Are you guys flippin' serious? This is INCREDIBLE. The MAJORITY of these predictions have come to pass. Do you not know life of 1900? And you are being too literal. I will put the predictions in bold, with my comments underneath as to my interpretation. I think this was amazingly insightful, and remember the reactions of those in 1900 were "impossible." Yet, read on. PT 1.

There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America

The population of the US in 1900 was around 76,000,000. In 2000, it was around 281,000,000. Great prediction.

Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next.

Nicaragua didn't ask. Neither did Mexico. Mexico just did it. Illegally.

The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present.

This is absolutely a truth-and the ages sited were "averages". The average life span of us right now is only in the 70's, yet many far surpass that, due to the above vast reforms mentioned.

The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only.

True. Time is relative. When you consider that in 1900, it would take all day to travel to the city from the suburbs by horse-then the hour commute the average commuter has from city/burbs is essentially a few minutes. Good prediction.

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.

Had a baby lately? Notice the toys meant to strengthen hand/eye/muscle coordination? Do you think they could've possibly imagined the kind of crap our kids have to play with today? And the gym thing is spot on. Bally's anyone? And we are coming to a point that we look at those out of shape-or morbidly obese-thus unable to walk a mile, much less ten-as "weak."

In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with ?moving-sidewalk? stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels.

This was before the elevated trains in New York and Chicago, before the subway. Moving sidewalk-escaltor. Or if you've been to an airport recently-moving sidewalk. The subway tunnels are well lite and venilated-at least in Chicago. Good predicition.

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.

AMTRACK.

Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

A horse in 1900 cost 165.00. That would be, in our money, the same if not more than a car costs us today. Farmers own John Deeres, plows, etc. Most farming is done by machinary, and horses have been substituted for every vehicle. We see a few cops on horses in the city and its "quaint." But that's it. The horse in harness is scarce-its now a recreational activity. Spot on prediction.

Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities.

Hi, I'm a missle. Or a bomb.



Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts.

Better than a compass. Its called sonar, radar, satellite.And you could call "deadly thunderbolts" missles. Bombs. Remember, this is pre-atom bomb predictions here.



These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day.

Wouldn't this be known as an army tank?


They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius.

I'd say they predicted the world wars and such with great accuracy.

These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

Yeah. Infra red imagery, satellite, etc. Great prediction.

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.

Pretty sure we call this TELEVISION. Cable. In techni-color. Right on prediction.

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.

You can add "internet" to this. Amazing prediction.

Peas as Large as Beets. Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does. Cane will once more be the chief source of our sugar supply.

Cane is the cheif source of our sugar supply and hey, guess what? You've heard of genetic food engineering, hybreding? Yep. We COULD do peas as large as beets. But we don't seem to like our food adulterated, irradiated, or genically crossed and spliced.


Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.

Hi, this is called the "chemicals that all of us get on these forums and bitch about being sprayed onto our crops and into our food supply causing us cancer." Pesticides. Unheard of back then. Chemical, anyway.

Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

Indeed. Its called a freezer, or a storage locker.

Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin.

True. Unless you go to catholic school-and even there, learning latin has been pretty much phased out, and we have simplified our language, comparetivly. No "thees' and "thous".


Time will be saved by grouping like studies.

Yep. At least in higher education.

 

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Pt 2

Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses.

This is true-I am back in college now, and not paying a dime for any of it. Well, except the loans I have to pay back. But the grants and scholarships-and there is gov't aid for other folks. This didn't happen back then.

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?.

All true.Back then, an operator had to direct your very local call, and most phones were party lines. Notice they also mention the word "wireless". I was a kid in the 70's when even then, no phone was "wireless." AWESOME prediction.

Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box.

Fortunatly, the "telephoned" music has been limited to elevators. But you get the point.

Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theatres or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts.

This would be known as "recording." Or, a stereo system in the home. LIVE televised concerts.


In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government.

Taste of Chicago is coming up, and we got alot of cool and popular bands playing in the Grant Park Shell-FREE FOR US ALL TO ENJOY.


The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devises will add to the emotional effect of music.

Synthesizer. To name one. Pt 3 coming up.

 

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Meanwhile both kinds of coal will have become more and more expensive. Man will have found electricity manufactured by waterpower to be much cheaper.

Yep, and yep. When was Hoover Dam built? 22 years after this prediction, the design for it started. Today, we still look for alternative forms to generate our stuff.

Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished.

Central air conditioning and heat.

Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

Thermostats. And Chimneys are now optional, no smoke is generated in the heating/cooling of homes, and today, I've noticed alot of new homes that don't even have a fireplace being built.

Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

They thought this would be huge, and today, only banks and hosptials seem to really like using the tube system. But, you could say that Fed Ex airplanes do the same job as this prediction. Its fair. And the fast automoblie vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house-UPS, DSL, big rigs. Right on.

Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking.

Welcome to Sam's Club! Hey, its COSTCO! Wait, it's MCDONALDS. Whatever you want to interpret this as-this was a damn good prediction.


Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons

In 30 minutes, or its free.......


The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed.

That's called "catering."

Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like.

Think of your big food processing plants. There you go. The prediction of processesed foods. With all the gadgetry we do have. Fabulous prediction.


All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravance.

This would be called a dishwasher. Having one's own cook IS an extravagance-and if you've gone grocery shopping lately, you'll see so is buying your own food. But +1 for the dishwasher predic.


Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants.

Hydroponics, indoor greenhouses, and full-spectrum lighting.

Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. The farmers of South America, South Africa, Australia and the South Sea Islands, whose seasons are directly opposite to ours, will thus supply us in winter with fresh summer foods, which cannot be grown here. Scientist will have discovered how to raise here many fruits now confined to much hotter or colder climates.

Of course. Why I can sit and munch on an Ugli fruit, here in Chicago.

Few drugs will be swallowed or taken into the stomach unless needed for the direct treatment of that organ itself.

This is true in ER medicine. Most, if not all-by IV injection.


The living body will to all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it. This work will be done with rays of invisible light.

xrays. CT Scans. MRI's. PET scans. Bone density scans. Ultrasound. Excellent prediction.

Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

In the US, anyway. We don't eat that crap.

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.


Predicting a TiTANIC sort of ship, only faster. I say, airplane. Again, this was 11 years prior to the Titanic finish.

I'd say that these were remarkable predictions given the times-I mean, this was no HDRkid here. I am actually truly impressed with this. Wonder who made these predictions, and if similar people today could do the same thing.

Just think, all the stuff we have today that they DIDNT even mention LOL!

 

[Whitelight]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Thanks for bumping this, it was a good read.

 

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Oh, and about the elimination of mice, rats and roaches LOL. Boy, wouldn't that be great if that were true, also the mosquitos and flies.

BUT we have come up with extermination via chemicals, insect repellants, bug zappers, and those sonic things you plug into the walls. Though we haven't "eliminated" them, we have managed for the most part, to eliminate them from our homes. Those in the 1900's I don't believe were as lucky. And they sure weren't spraying DEET around the neighborhoods to control the mosquitos. I don't know what they use now, but I know that we still get a chemical cocktail in our air in the summertime, when the mosquitos are especially bad!

 

[Keroscene]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

"Are you guys flippin' serious? This is INCREDIBLE. The MAJORITY of these predictions have come to pass. Do you not know life of 1900? And you are being too literal. I will put the predictions in bold, with my comments underneath as to my interpretation. I think this was amazingly insightful, and remember the reactions of those in 1900 were "impossible."


I thought for the most part they were pretty accurate too. I think I said that in this thread already though. Time wise,those are some pretty far off predictions, and they came pretty close to being exact. Rather impressive for how old they are. I was kind of surprised when nobody else thought the same. THanks for agreeing with me!

It's very good to see you back and posting again, Risata. I was just telling someone on CCnet the other day how I missed you and your posts. It's good to see you.

 

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

"Are you guys flippin' serious? This is INCREDIBLE. The MAJORITY of these predictions have come to pass. Do you not know life of 1900? And you are being too literal. I will put the predictions in bold, with my comments underneath as to my interpretation. I think this was amazingly insightful, and remember the reactions of those in 1900 were "impossible."


I thought for the most part they were pretty accurate too. I think I said that in this thread already though. Time wise,those are some pretty far off predictions, and they came pretty close to being exact. Rather impressive for how old they are. I was kind of surprised when nobody else thought the same. THanks for agreeing with me!

It's very good to see you back and posting again, Risata. I was just telling someone on CCnet the other day how I missed you and your posts. It's good to see you.

Thanks Kero! Its great to see the site back. I just said to Brent on FB, I MISS TPN! Then I go to an older email I have and see the email to link to here. I saw your name first and thought YEA! Part of the old gang! (well, familiar to me, anyway.) Part of what I loved about here is that it wasn't negative. Some of the other sites-especialy GLP-yikes. For the most part here, theres just intelligent debate, even when people disagree. Glad to be back, I hope we can wrangle up some more old and new blood to join in! Finally did away with the cat and the lime helmet, huh? LOL

 

[Phoenix]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

They wanted to rid the world of wild animals. LIke they did the native Americans. People are stupid in 1900 and in 2000....

I assume you refer to prediction 11 and 28, but two of the 29 listed. The will of extermination seems to not so much to be of the wild animals, but of co-species that have caused illness in men, otherwise called pests.
"Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated." Prediction 11
"Rats and mice will have been exterminated."
Prediction 28
Perhaps what we can call stupidity is the method we/they have gone about killing these fellow travelers of life; introducing poisons that wind up coming back to us, in the circle of life ,and winding up in mother's milk.
Perhaps these lines hurt the worst
"The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly."
There is a cultural identity relation of such tribes as the Siux with the horse, and the Buffalo. The horse was introduced by Europe though. I think the tribes of the New World let the horses feel their animal spirits better though.

The parts I find most amazing was what was suppose to happen in agriculture.
Prediction #12: Peas as Large as Beets.
Prediction #13/:
Prediction #26:
Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence.
Prediction #14: Black, Blue and Green Roses.
You see some of these in farm fairs, but I wonder if the brain drain of urban life and the move to "Get big or get out"(of agriculture) of Nixon Administration put these out of our time line. It is said that those who get A's go to the cities to get jobs. Those who get D's mow their John Dear tractors over the corn fields.
The predictions that came true:
We got the around the could communication.
We got the population numbers.
We got the ready made meals.
I think we used our energies on Madison Avenue packaging instead of getting out hands dirty with soil.

Aside from the glimpse into what people thought, and how good normal people are at coming up with predictions. Even how good
"the most learned and conservative minds in America" are at making predictions. What we see is that they falter in their predictions. The way they falter tells you about what their hopes and dreams held. As well as realities they were not aware of, or thought through.

But it also makes me consider, what pitfalls do our own dreams and hopes have for us in the present age. Our age of iphones and ATVs. Are we thinking of seven generations? Should our ability to manufacture vast metal things and burn through fuel like there is no tomorrow come to an end, what world are we leaving behind? What things in this age of excess are worth keeping and passing on? Will they be able to be preserved without the "civilization" we take for granted becomes unplugged and the stores closed for good.

How much can be done to help prepare ourselves and the land to re-accept us as members of nature? Would we even be willing to make such changes even if we had to?​

 

[Phoenix]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Are you guys flippin' serious? This is INCREDIBLE. The MAJORITY of these predictions have come to pass. Do you not know life of 1900? And you are being too literal. I will put the predictions in bold, with my comments underneath as to my interpretation. I think this was amazingly insightful, and remember the reactions of those in 1900 were "impossible." Yet, read on. PT 1.

They are only a majority thanks to you giving them the benefit of the doubt with your interpretations. Unfortunately this is how most predictions are "proven" "amazingly accurate".
I will demonstrate where most needed.
Prediction #1:
*350,000,000 to 500,000,000; this is a 200,000,000 margin or error; a 2/5 or 40% level of acceptable error, and there are mathematical formula for these things. Even with this it is still wrong and overshot.
Census 2000 conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906.
Census 2000 Gateway
*Latin America goes USA.
Well this is a miss. Your interpretation demonstrates your own world view. Another interpretation is that America de-facto controls these Latin American countries with various CIA influences. Still did not happen as described.

Prediction 2
*Average American taller.
True. Also fatter. Actually the BMI tables are faulty in the area that America is pushing itself into. The body mass index tables were originally created by life insurance companies. The idea that women said they weighed less than they did and men said they were taller than they were, were figured in as part of the tables. Now that people are getting taller and fatter they are showing up as obese partly as a result of bad tables.

*fifty years instead of thirty-five
This is a miss. They under estimated.

*Building in blocks will be illegal.
Miss that you ignored.

*The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only.
Miss

*A penny will pay the fare.
Miss that you ignored.

Prediction #3:
This has been going on since Plato's Republic. But yes, we go wish to give our kids exercise.

Prediction #4:
*There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities.
Big miss, infact it seems to be the main point of this prediction that traffic does not happen as street level.
I will grant as you pointed out the subways and moving sidewalks have been built and made and did come to pass. This only means that people were working on these ideas at the time he wrote this. This guy was not trying to be a shear. He was reporting what respectable people in the field had to tell him.
*Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.
Umm, very very wrong.

Prediction #5:
*Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

Very good. The East cost does have special tracts for the high end speeds.

*To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express.
Umm AMTRACK has been known to be up to a day late because of tie up with coal freight trains.

*There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars.
GE is making some really good trains.

Prediction #6:
I am going to agree with your assessment of prediction 6. Farmers have gone from horse to auto and it more than likely had to do with economic decisions.

From what I have done so far. There are quite a few misses. Some you neglected to even try to interpret as accurate. Such is how normal prediction of the future go as done by experts in the field. I am having fun with this though. So I will continue on through them as you have.​

 

[Risata]

Re: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Hi Phoenix,

Well, you are certainly entitled to view their predictions as "accurate" or "inaccurate", or "hit" or "miss." But since they did not seem to be passing themselves off as some sort of seer or psychic, but rather it being more imaginings and visions of the future, then I think I can interpret them with imagining and to see where many of their predictions, though not "spot on" down to the exact numbers, can be up for interpretation. Its not like we are trying to figure out the quadrants of Nostradomous. While some of the predictions were "out there", at the same time, they were not "far off." No, we do NOT have strawberries the size of our heads, but we DO have GMO, hybred foods and its not far off to image that it is possible, but for obvious reasons, we don't do it.

That being that we in this time, understand DNA, and understand that there can be repercussions of playing God. That said, we don't seem to want strawberries the size of our heads-though that doesn't mean that it can't be done. We un-seeded the watermelon-and while they didn't mention that, I'm sure that would be something they'd say would be possible in 2000.

If you want to be literal and exacting, taking the fun out of the whole thing, then by all means. It doesn't mean that I "ignored" anything, just couldn't think of anything that it could be interpreted as today. Don't be a kill joy to my fun, please, by being critical that I am pointing out predictions that weren't "accurate." Sometimes you need to think outside of the box, and just enjoy things-it is what it is.