Marginal Revolution: Predictions about 2000 from 1900

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Predictions about 2000 from 1900

Here is the list, via Kottke, and here. My favorites:

Prediction #22: 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.

Prediction #23: 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. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons.

And strawberries will be as large as apples.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 19, 2007 at 05:51 PM in Data Source | Permalink

Comments

Well, isn't the internet just a series of tubes?

Posted by: Dan at Apr 19, 2007 6:37:46 PM

I love #3: "A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."

Posted by: R. S. Porter at Apr 19, 2007 6:46:12 PM

Yeah, replace "pneumatic" with "electronic", and they predicted the internet. Except it doesn't deliver dinner (yet).

Regarding #3: Aren't most healthy people able to walk ten miles? Was the ability to walk ten miles uncommon in 1900?

Posted by: Dan at Apr 19, 2007 7:23:09 PM

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

Rather dismal, no?

No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary

HAR HAR!

There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet.

My name starts with an X :( (really)

... A university education will be free to every man and woman...

True in UK, and my country :D

Posted by: Chewxy at Apr 19, 2007 7:23:23 PM

Well they was pretty accurate in the direction and thing that were accomplished,
- Better Health, Gymnastic in Public schools, faster and cheaper transport, better food, Worldwide news coverage in Newspapers and TV ( Color), Wireless phones, Air Conditioners..etc
Som were way off but was better than I expected...not so good on the means and technology used, but I doubt someone trying to predic 2107 today would be as good :-)

Posted by: Alejno at Apr 19, 2007 7:31:56 PM

Well they were pretty accurate in the direction and thing that were accomplished,
- Better Health, Gymnastic in Public schools, faster and cheaper transport, better food, Worldwide news coverage in Newspapers and TV ( Color), Wireless phones, Air Conditioners..etc
Som were way off but was better than I expected...not so good on the means and technology used, but I doubt someone trying to predic 2107 today would be as good :-)

Posted by: Alejno at Apr 19, 2007 7:32:18 PM

Prediction 23 is absolutely true in the case of pizza and chinese food, not so much roast beef (at least in my city).

I would say the majority of the predictions are correct, and the rest laughable.

And some require reinterpretation by the standards of 1900. Eg. We have near zero flies these days, compared to a city where the streets are littered with horse dung. (Go to an Indian city if you don't believe me.)

Posted by: doctorpat at Apr 19, 2007 7:43:27 PM

And 22 predates Vanaver Bush!

Posted by: Brad Hutchings at Apr 19, 2007 7:45:39 PM

Didn't Ted Stevens describe the internet as a series of tubes?

Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Apr 19, 2007 7:56:39 PM

Surprisingly accurate! Sure, the stuff about agriculture and airplanes was off, but quite a few of the predictions are on the money. And for quite a bit of the 2nd half of this past century, the prediction that "Russian will rank second" (#16) among languages looked like it just might be true.

Dr Cowen, I'm curious to know if you have any predictions for 2100.

Posted by: Silentio at Apr 19, 2007 9:08:49 PM

#19 "The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad."

Wow... he predicted the modern keyboard instrument. Crazy!

Posted by: Tony at Apr 19, 2007 9:13:54 PM

People are surprisingly uncritical about the source of this article - has anyone confirmed this was really published in 1900?

The content and presentation remind me of every other 'funny' article / chain-mail that's been mis-attributed and has to get debunked on Snopes.

Posted by: Teman at Apr 19, 2007 9:35:07 PM

It appears to be legit: I found this summary list on the url below. Scroll down to "v18", item 8.

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/t588.htm#TOP

Posted by: Foobarista at Apr 19, 2007 11:21:50 PM

Predicted things happen, although in altered forms. But when they do, they don't have the same meaning or effect. Going to the moon has been a literary device since the 1600s or so. Not to mention Jules Verne. But the cultural significance of the moon landings was not that they happened, but that a billion people watched them on television. (The observation is not original with me, but I haven't been able to find it -- Asimov, I think.)

And cooking is disappearing as a life skill you learn growing up (at least girls did) and turning into a hobby, as gardening has replaced farming for almost everybody. People eat out, or order in, or buy meals to microwave at home.

Posted by: linda seebach at Apr 20, 2007 3:02:10 AM

Did anybody else notice #13 "strawberries as large as apples?" Perhaps with enough nuclear radiation.

While the thrust of these predictions are generally correct (healthier, wealthier, generally everything in life got better), some of them are funny to read now.

Posted by: Matthew at Apr 20, 2007 3:34:41 AM

Heh. Well, I both got the prediction number wrong for the strawberries and completely skipped over Tyler mentioning them. Oh well, that's what you get for posting at 3 am.

Posted by: Matthew at Apr 20, 2007 3:38:51 AM

Strawberries the size of apples ehh....
http://www.hydrotaste.com/farm_photos.html

Posted by: tyler h at Apr 20, 2007 4:42:19 AM

That was surprisingly accurate. In fact that is the main reason I trust the source to be genuine, a hoax could be made more fun by making his predictions more ridicoulos.

The peumatic tube thing could have happened, they have similar systems in hospitals. (Of course you have to scale it up a bit but that can probaly be done.)

It is interesting that he more or less accuarately predicted the growth of the welfare state.

Posted by: Johan Richter at Apr 20, 2007 5:00:54 AM

As others have pointed out, many of these are surprisingly accurate (Huge points for predicting radiology!). I'm waiting for the post where you say that Robin Hanson's great grandmother worked for the magazine :) And that they arrived at the predictions in an illicit prediction market den :)

Posted by: Daniel at Apr 20, 2007 6:42:35 AM

Would that be a 1900 apple or a 2000 apple?

Posted by: Cyrus at Apr 20, 2007 9:11:44 AM

I found peas as large as beets weirder than strawberries as large as apples. I can imagine wanting the latter.

Posted by: Jim Hu at Apr 20, 2007 9:44:29 AM

The pneumatic tube idea was probably based on an innovation in the new department stores c. 1900. Store owners didn't trust sales clerks to make change (almost all transactions involved cash), and had central accounting offices that made change, instead. At first, clerks placed the sales ticket and the customer's money in a locked box and gave it to an employee (typically a boy) who took the box to the accountants who made the change and put it back in the box for the boy to return to the clerk and customer. Then, the boys were replaced by pneumatic tubes to carry the cash. This system was remarkably durable. I was born in Washington, DC in 1947 and remember from my childhood the workings of the pneumatic tubes in DC's department stores.

Posted by: Tom Leahey at Apr 20, 2007 11:03:26 AM

Prediction #13 is exactly the same as prediction #26. Didn't they have editors in 1900?

Posted by: sourcreamus at Apr 20, 2007 11:32:40 AM

I gotta give it to this guy for at least being humble in his predictions. None of that "personal jet packs for all by 2000" that shows like "The Jetsons" and such promised all of us. Nope, just very modest predictions like "England in two days."

Posted by: Champthom at Apr 20, 2007 12:10:44 PM

A friend at Yale sent me a pdf of the original. The sequence of predictions is different (which is perhaps why the reprint duplicates a prediction), but the text for each of the predictions is the same. It's not a hoax, which was my first thought.

Posted by: Ted at Apr 20, 2007 1:56:01 PM

I'm impressed with how accurately he predicted the modern battle ship, rise in global trade, refridgeration, amazing communications revolution, and shift to the suburbs. He wasn't all that far off the the price to travel from burb to city center a Nickel would have been the right answer (a penny then is worth about 20-35c today).
http://www.freedom-motors.com/Specs-530Engine.pdf
The bigger engines are 2 HP/lb, I'm very impressed at this projection.

Posted by: nelsonal at Apr 20, 2007 2:26:52 PM

Strawberries now as large as apples then? I'll buy that. There are some pretty large strawberries on the market now, and apples have been getting bigger in the past 107 years, too. Commercial apples then were more like the apples you get from people's backyard apple trees, which are much smaller than most grocery-store apples.

Posted by: Anthony at Apr 20, 2007 3:31:03 PM

Things are so much better? In 1900 a man of means could go about his business, in every sense of that word, barely touched by government.

Posted by: ricpic at Apr 20, 2007 3:51:34 PM

Hmm. Maybe a selection bias? The list is interesting because it seems to get a lot of things right (for some value of "right"), but what about other lists compiled in 1900 that got things wrong, or, rather, wrong in uninteresting/unentertaining ways?

Posted by: Cheng-Jih Chen at Apr 21, 2007 7:48:40 AM

For those suspicious of a hoax, as I was, here is a link to a scan of the original article. Of course, that could be fake as well...

Posted by: Franz @ Blue Collar Agents at Apr 21, 2007 12:17:00 PM

I rly lykd d #16: "There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary." Wht do u thnk? Snds lykly... :-) LOL. Well, it wasn't that hard.

Posted by: Terence Reis at May 10, 2007 12:08:05 AM

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