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2012-01-11 13:36:57
By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine
In 1900, an American civil engineer called John Elfreth Watkins made a number
of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. How did he do?
As is customary at the start of a new year, the media have been full of
predictions about what may happen in the months ahead.
But a much longer forecast made in 1900 by a relatively unknown engineer has
been recirculating in the past few days.
In December of that year, at the start of the 20th Century, John Elfreth
Watkins wrote a piece published on page eight of an American women's magazine,
Ladies' Home Journal, entitled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.
He began the article with the words: "These prophecies will seem strange,
almost impossible," explaining that he had consulted the country's "greatest
institutions of science and learning" for their opinions on 29 topics.
Watkins was a writer for the Journal's sister magazine, the Saturday Evening
Post, based in Indianapolis.
The Post brought this article to a modern audience last week when its history
editor Jeff Nilsson wrote a feature praising Watkins' accuracy.
It was picked up and caused some excitement on Twitter. So what did Watkins get
right - and wrong?
10 predictions that Watkins got right...
1. Digital colour photography
Watkins did not, of course, use the word "digital" or spell out precisely how
digital cameras and computers would work, but he accurately predicted how
people would come to use new photographic technology.
Grab from The Ladies' Journal A scan of the original article can be found
online
"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.... photographs will reproduce all of
nature's colours."
This showed major foresight, says Mr Nilsson. When Watkins was making his
predictions, it would have taken a week for a picture of something happening in
China to make its way into Western papers.
People thought photography itself was a miracle, and colour photography was
very experimental, he says.
"The idea of having cameras gathering information from opposite ends of the
world and transmitting them - he wasn't just taking a present technology and
then looking to the next step, it was far beyond what anyone was saying at the
time."
Patrick Tucker from the World Future Society, based in Maryland in the US,
thinks Watkins might even be hinting at a much bigger future breakthrough.
"'Photographs will be telegraphed' reads strikingly like how we access
information from the web," says Mr Tucker.
2. The rising height of Americans
"Americans will be taller by from one to two inches."
Watkins had unerring accuracy here, says Mr Nilsson - the average American man
in 1900 was about 66-67ins (1.68-1.70m) tall and by 2000, the average was 69ins
(1.75m).
How did Watkins do?
image of Patrick Tucker Patrick Tucker World Future Society
Watkins' record as a forecaster, based on this small segment of his work, was
less than perfect. But that doesn't mean he was a bad futurist. Although he
died before the World Future Society was formed in 1966, we would have been
honoured to consider him a member. We believe that talking about the future is
the most important thing that people do, even though the future, by its nature,
is unknowable. We invent the future through our actions and change it
constantly. We can never know it fully but we can always be better prepared for
what may occur. Watkins helped people begin this act of preparation and
considered creation.
World Future Society
BBC experts predict big stories in 2012
Today, it's 69.5ins (1.76m) for men and 64ins (1.63m) for women.
3. Mobile phones
"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."
International phone calls were unheard of in Watkins' day. It was another 15
years before the first call was made, by Alexander Bell, from one coast of the
US to the other. The idea of wireless telephony was truly revolutionary.
4. Pre-prepared meals
"Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries
of today."
The proliferation of ready meals in supermarkets and takeaway shops in High
Streets suggests that Watkins was right, although he envisaged the meals would
be delivered on plates which would be returned to the cooking establishments to
be washed.
5. Slowing population growth
"There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America [the
US]."
The figure is too high, says Nilsson, but at least Watkins was guessing in the
right direction. If the US population had grown by the same rate it did between
1800 and 1900, it would have exceeded 1 billion in 2000.
"Instead, it grew just 360%, reaching 280m at the start of the new century."
6. Hothouse vegetables
Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer, said
Watkins, with electric wires under the soil and large gardens under glass.
Vegetables
"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 to grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds.
Rays of coloured light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity
applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early."
Large gardens under glass were already a reality, says Philip Norman of the
Garden Museum in London, but he was correct to predict the use of electricity.
Although coloured lights and electric currents did not take off, they were
probably experimented with.
Who was J Elfreth Watkins?
Lived from 1852-1903
Was a railroad engineer until he suffered a "disabling" accident in 1873
After that, became a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad
In 1885, took a job as curator at the transport section of the US National
Museum
Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives
"Electricity certainly features in plant propagation. But the earliest item we
have is a 1953 booklet Electricity in Your Garden detailing electrically warmed
frames, hotbeds and cloches and electrically heated greenhouses, issued by the
British Electrical Development Association.
"We have a 1956 soil heater, used in soil to assist early germination of seeds
in your greenhouse."
7. Television
"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."
Watkins foresaw cameras and screens linked by electric circuits, a vision
practically realised in the 20th Century by live international television and
latterly by webcams.
8. Tanks
Twitter grab Tweets praised Watkins' accuracy
"Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express
trains of today."
Leonardo da Vinci had talked about this, says Nilsson, but Watkins was taking
it further. There weren't many people that far-sighted.
9. Bigger fruit
"Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our
great-great-grandchildren."
Lots of larger varieties of fruit have been developed in the past century, but
Watkins was over-optimistic with regard to strawberries.
10. The Acela Express
"Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains one hundred and
fifty miles per hour."
Exactly 100 years after writing those words, to the very month, Amtrak's
flagship high-speed rail line, the Acela Express, opened between Boston and
Washington, DC. It reaches top speeds of 150mph, although the average speed is
considerably less than that. High-speed rail in other parts of the world, even
in 2000, was considerably faster.
...and four he didn't
1. No more C, X or Q
"There will be no C, X or Q in our everyday alphabet. They will be abandoned
because unnecessary."
This was obviously wrong, says Patrick Tucker of the World Future Society, but
also remarkable in the way that it hints at the possible effects of mass
communication on communication itself.
2. Everybody will walk 10 miles a day
"This presents a rather generous view of future humanity but doesn't seem to
consider the popularity and convenience of the very transportation
breakthroughs [moving sidewalks, express trains, coaches] forecast elsewhere in
the article," says Mr Tucker.
And some other Watkins forecasts
Central heating and air conditioning
Cheap cars
Average life expectancy to rise to 50
Free university education
Refrigerated transport of food
3. No more cars in large cities
"All hurry traffic will be below or above ground when brought within city
limits."
However, many cities do have pedestrian zones in their historic centres. And he
correctly forecast elevated roads and subways.
4. No mosquitoes or flies
"Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been exterminated."
Watkins was getting ahead of himself here. Indeed the bed bug is making a huge
comeback in the US and some other countries.
Maybe the end of the mosquito and the house fly is something to look forward to
in 2100?