Victorian Fairy Portrait
Originally uploaded by ex.libris
Over the past week, I find myself continually returning to read this collection of “Predictions of the year 2000″ from the Ladies Home Journal of 1900. These predictions, written in that turn-of-the-century style that I could just eat up with a spoon, are as insightful as they are entertaining to read 100 years after they were written. Some are quite remarkably on the money, such as:
Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic.
Prediction #18: 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.
Prediction #25: Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days.
While others show as just how much farther we have to go…
Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large.
Prediction #17: A university education will be free to every man and woman…Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses…In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.
Read the whole set of predictions here
« Channeling: “Darjeeling Limited” Court Life vs. Club Land »
