Paleo-Future

[Rædwald]

I found this whilst surfing. it is about Paleofuture (don't know if thats the technical term) which means looking at past interpretations of the future.

What do you think to this?

Ladies Home Journal 1901

It is an article in the "Ladies Home Journal" from 1901 explaining what life would be like in 2001

also check out these victorian post cards of the year 2000

Victorian year 2000

there is more on www.paleo-future.com

[Thanatos]

Hey, they weren't that far off!

[Rædwald]

Thats what I thought too Some of the stuff in the 1901 article is pretty spot on.

[boofhead]

WOW Horatious thankyou so much! That stuff is right up my alley......good stuff.

You can feel the echoes of Jules Verne and the consciousness of great things about to unravel which were inherent at the time......I think the attitude was basically "There will be a Great War in the world and it will change everything as things are reaching a climax". And it happened......almost a psychosomatic world cataclysm....also Edison and other scientific breakthroughs are evident.

If you find more.....please post

[Rædwald]

WOW Horatious thankyou so much! That stuff is right up my alley......good stuff.

You can feel the echoes of Jules Verne and the consciousness of great things about to unravel which were inherent at the time......I think the attitude was basically "There will be a Great War in the world and it will change everything as things are reaching a climax". And it happened......almost a psychosomatic world cataclysm....also Edison and other scientific breakthroughs are evident.

If you find more.....please post

I will try, Paleofuture will not show up in wikipedia or anything thats why I wondered if it was the technical term. I have tried looking for other sites but have only found the site these were on so far, www.paleo-future.com.

Its a pity because it is an area of history that looks really interesting.

[Rædwald]

Here are some more from the same site.

Enjoy

RUSSIAN FUTURE (1900)

[Rædwald]

I have found a couple more of these

This Site has some images from punch magazine about the future. The site appears to be a dictionary about Victorain London.

I am still trying to find a copy of an article from Jules Blois written in 1909 about what life would be ike in the next 100 years. An extract of it I read said that there will be synthetic foods and everyone will have personal flying bicycles.

[Siblesz]

They were pretty accurate, for many things. Funny how some of the predictions they make are still made today by futurists.

[the_mango55]

The ladies home journal predictions were pretty good. Although some, like the no more wild animals and the extinction of flies and mosquitos, would be disasterous and nearly impossible not only 100 years from now, but any time in the future.

The transportation ones seem ridiculous today, but I guess some of the things we predict for the future will look ridiculous 100 years from now.

[boofhead]

LOL the "police of the future" - they look like the Mary Poppins fan club

[Francisco Montana]

Thread moved to the Athenaeum. (Great thread BTW!) ~ Lord Gruffles

[Simetrical]

Interesting predictions. You need to be wary of these, though, since they have a propensity to be faked.

[Rædwald]

Interesting predictions. You need to be wary of these, though, since they have a propensity to be faked.

True, the Punch magazine ones were really ridiculing Edisons ideas.

I post them popel can make up their own minds, I will try and find some more

[Rædwald]

Ok here is another one for you

an article from 1st January 1901 about things that they think will happen in the 20th Century

here is The article

However its not very clear so here is what it says:

Will lovely woman do the proposing?
Will woman bosses run [politics?] as they now run the home?
Will the housemaid be a houseman?
Will horses be exhibited as curiosities?
Will politics be run on a philanthropic basis?
Will the Boston woman discover the north pole?
Will airships be provided for messenger boys?
Will men wear frilled shirt waists and women trousers?
Will the [unreadable] Mrs. Grundy be driven into a convent?
Will the college girl carry a cane and smoke a pipe?
Will there be free lunch stands for women?
Will men go to church evenings instead of to the club?
Will the wife kiss her husband goodby before starting off to business?
Will squirrels want just a quarter of a second longer to make faces at the hunter?
Will rich noblemen marry poor American girls?
Will hornets and other stinging things arbitrate instead of fight when their nests are pulled?
Will the grain be extracted from the head of wheat and other cereals by a magnet and save the labor of harvesting straw?
Will there be a law compelling [unreadable] remain silent?
Will cows come home at milking time as eagerly as field hands come to supper?
And will those same cows semioccasionally turn grass into butter instead of milk?
Will there be any escape from the [coon?] song save suicide?
Will every busy man wear an illuminated collar button?
Will mind reading [unreadable] a key to the intentions of hens as to their duties and villainies?
Will the automatic principle be adjusted to taxes so that they pay themselves?
Will there be a society for the extermination of noisy milkmen which will really [unreadable]?
Will pounds be pounds and quarts be quarts in weight as well in price?
Will women be compelled to flatten their pompadours at the theater so that men may see the play?
Will all consumers of [unreadable] have the common sense to lay in their winter stock in midsummer at any sacrifice?
Will the creatures that build guano mountains at the equator occasionally fly over the impoverished farms of North America?
Will our beloved country still be going to the "demnition bowwows" and political orators howling for votes to save it?
Now, candidly, wouldn't you like to know what sayers will be saying, thinkers thinking, writers writing, doers doing and plotters plotting at the end of the next hundred years?
Will the century be ten years [unreadable] . . . library?

from www.paleo-future.com

I don't know if it is genuine, you can make up your own minds.

[boofhead]

Seems very genuine to me - some predictions right on the button, others not so but understandable considering the times....

I managed to decipher a few of those words...

*...the estimable Mrs.Grundy...
*...furnish a key to the intentions of hens...
*Will there be a society for the extermination of noisy milkmen which will really exterminate?
*Will all consumers of anthracite have the common sense to lay in their winter stock in midsummer at any sacrifice?

Anthracite is a form of coal (makes sense).
"Mrs.Grundy" has had several forms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Grundy - and "estimable sounds right in this context.

Dude I should try to find some of these gems myself....

EDIT: Check these out

I just found them:

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won't last out the year." --The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

"But what ... is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously onsidered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of novalue to
us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would
pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's
associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in
the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." --A Yale University
management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)


"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" --H.M. Warner, Warner
Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not
Gary Cooper." --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading
role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports
say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make."--Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields'
Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
--Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M
"Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we' ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our
salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went
to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You
haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve
Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve
Wozniak's personal computer.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across ll
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to
accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of
weight training."
--Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by
inventing Nautilus.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy." --Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." --Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H.
Duell,Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

Not exactly accurate....but funny nevertheless!

[Rædwald]

Cool + rep

where did you find them? I found another site with similar predictions from the 50's and 60's I will have to try and find it again.

Also there was something else along similar lines, a publishing house telling J.K Rowling that Harry Potter was no good so they would not publish it. I can't remember which it was though.

[boofhead]

Cool + rep

where did you find them? I found another site with similar predictions from the 50's and 60's I will have to try and find it again.

Also there was something else along similar lines, a publishing house telling J.K Rowling that Harry Potter was no good so they would not publish it. I can't remember which it was though.

It was just an email I found posted somewhere on several sites but I think this may be the original, as it contains more predictions than the others:

" Ours has been the first [expedition], and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality. "
Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

#
" I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone. " Charles Darwin, in the foreword to his book, The Origin of Species, 1869.

#
" I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped. "
Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901.

#
" Man will not fly for 50 years. "
Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, to brother Orville, after a disappointing flying experiment, 1901 (their first successful flight was in 1903).

#
" Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. "
Grover Cleveland, U.S. President, 1905.

#
" You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees. "
Kaiser Wilhelm, to the German troops, August 1914.

#
" Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose." -– Herbert Hoover, on Prohibition, 1928.

#
" Democracy will be dead by 1950. "
John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936.

#
" This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. "
-– Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, September 30th, 1938.

#
" The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn't mean they are any good at making aircraft. They are bluffing. They are excellent at bluffing. "
Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, 1942.

#
" It will be gone by June. "
Variety, passing judgement on rock 'n roll in 1955

#
" A short-lived satirical pulp. "
TIME, writing off Mad magazine in 1956.

#
" We will bury you. "
Nikita Krushchev, Soviet Premier, predicting Soviet communism will win over U.S. capitalism, 1958.

#
" In all likelihood world inflation is over. "
International Monetary Fund Ceo, 1959.

#
" And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam "
Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.

#
" Reagan doesn't have that presidential look. "
United Artists Executive, rejecting Reagan as lead in 1964 film The Best Man.

#
" Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop - because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds. "
TIME, 1966, in one sentence writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of it.

#
" It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister. "
Margaret Thatcher, future Prime Minister, October 26th, 1969.

#
" Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation."
Karl Marx.

#
" Read my lips: NO NEW TAXES. "
George Bush, 1988.

#
" That virus is a pussycat. "
-– Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988.

#
" This antitrust thing will blow over. "
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.

#
" The case is a loser. "
Johnnie Cochran, on soon-to-be client O.J.'s chances of winning, 1994.

#
" There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. "
General Tommy Franks, March 22nd, 2003.






Light Bulb


"... good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men. "
British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison's light bulb, 1878.

#
" Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress. "
Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.

#
" Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure. " Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.


Automobiles


#
" The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle. "
Literary Digest, 1899.

#
" The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad. "
The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

#
" That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced. "
Scientific American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909.

Airplanes

#
" Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. "
- Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later. Newcomb was not impressed.

#
" Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. "
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

#
" It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere. "
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895.

#
" Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. "
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1904.

#
" There will never be a bigger plane built. "
A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

Computers

#
" Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons. "
Popular Mechanics, March 1949.

Radio

#
" Radio has no future. "
Lord Kelvin, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897.

#
" Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public ... has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company ... "
a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

Space Travel

#
" To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances. "
Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926

#
" Space travel is utter bilge. "
Richard Van Der Riet Woolley, upon assuming the post of Astronomer Royal in 1956.

#
" Space travel is bunk. "
Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).

#
" There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States. "
T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

Rockets

#
" A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere. "
New York Times, 1936.

#
" ... too far-fetched to be considered. "
Editor of Scientific American, in a letter to Robert Goddard about Goddard's idea of a rocket-accelerated airplane bomb, 1940 (German V2 missiles came down on London 3 years later).

#
" We stand on the threshold of rocket mail. "
U.S. postmaster general Arthur Summerfield, in 1959.

Atomic and Nuclear Power

#
" There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. "
Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.

#
" There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. "
Albert Einstein, 1932.

#
" The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. "
Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.

#
" Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous. "
Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939.

#
" That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done [research on]... The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives. "
Admiral William D. Leahy, U.S. Admiral working in the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project, advising President Truman on atomic weaponry, 1944.

#
" Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years. " Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

#
" The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems... The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300. "
–- Robert Ferry, executive of the U.S. Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955.

Films

#
" The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."
-– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916

#
" Who the hell wants to hear actors talk ? "
H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927.

Telephone/Telegraph

#
" A man has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires. " News item in a New York newspaper, 1868.

#
" It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway ? " Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone, 1876.

#
" The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys. "
Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

#
" This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. "
A memo at Western Union, 1878 (or 1876).

Television

#
" While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming. "
Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

#
" Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

#
" Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan. "
Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.


Railroads


#
" Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe,would die of asphyxia. "
Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.

#
" What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches ? "
The Quarterly Review, March edition, 1825

#
" Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as 'railroads' ... As you may well know, Mr. President, 'railroad' carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by 'engines' which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed. "
Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830(?).




Other Technology


#
" If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said 'you can't do this'. "
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

#
" What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense. "
Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, 1800s.

#
" Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war. "
Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915.

#
" The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous. "
Comment of Aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916.

#
" Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work. "
Cambridge Aeronautics Professor, when shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine.

#
" X-rays will prove to be a hoax. "
Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883

#
" I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea. "
HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901.

#
" The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most. "
IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

#
" [By 1985], machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do. "
Herbert A. Simon, of Carnegie Mellon University - considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence - speaking in 1965.

#
" Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition. "
Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962.

Excuse the length of the quote from http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/20...tml&frame=true
but I thought they were all worth reading!

All this makes me wonder about the current scientists/technologists/inventors who are being ridiculed in their fields, almost ostracized because of their unconventional ideas. Which of these men will provide mankind with great new breakthroughs, and who among them will fail? I know there are scientists around who cannot get research funding for their ideas and are tinkering in backyards and garages developing their ideas. And the sad thing is, after many of these fellows develop great innovations, they often die poor, and with little recognition.

[Rædwald]

Indeed it is a sad fact that many of the inventions that change the future for us, will not be taken seriously today. Look at mobile phones, back when they were first invented nobody thought they would be as big as they are now.

Anyway here is a group of pictures from 1952. The Chicago Tribune asked leading fashion designers of the day to design clothes that the woman would be wearing in the year 2000, these are the results.

[Richard]

http://bp3.blogger.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/...leo-future.jpg wasn't too far off with some predections. English is indeed bgning 2 b killd bt the lttr C iz stil vry usfil. c?, liek dis. Horses and flies still exist, as do wild animals. Maybe in another 200 years we'll have no wild animals. I feel we will always have horses though. As for the pneumatic tubes...er, nice thought but we still generally go out to buy our food and cook it ourselves. The military stuff was also pretty wrong. And free education? HA

Everything else was pretty close. They UNDERPREDICTED the life expectancy rise though. How's 80 sound, not 50.

[chris_uk_83]

That article seems far too accurate to have been written that long ago. Are you sure that isn't someone writing it today in the style of yesteryear?