Did you know that Nikola Tesla thought people would no longer drink coffee in the 21st century?
Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com. In a 1935 article in Liberty
magazine, Tesla predicted that it simply wouldn’t be cool to poison our systems with what he
considered to be harmful stimulants like caffeine and nicotine. He thought alcohol, on the other
hand, would withstand the tests of time. Tesla called it an “elixir of life.” So, depending
on which scientific studies you believe, he was kind of right!
And that’s just the first of many bizarre, hilarious, and outrageous predictions for
the 21st century that I’m going to share with you today.
As evidenced by my own 4-5 cups a day, Tesla was way off about coffee. He also misjudged
what we’d consider headlining news in the 21st century, predicting that newspapers would,
quote, “give a mere ‘stick’ in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies.”
Tesla believed the front pages would mostly cover scientific hypotheses. So…yeah…
There was also a fair amount of speculation in the past that meat would be much less common
in our time. In a 1952 issue of Galaxy Magazine, science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein
posited that fish and yeast would be our main sources of protein, and that beef would be
a luxury. Isaac Asimov, another famous science fiction writer, took it even further. In 1964,
he imagined that the 2014 World’s Fair would feature an Algae Bar with “mock-turkey”
and “pseudosteak,” saying, quote, “It won’t be bad at all (if you can dig up those
premium prices).” So I guess the Impossible Burger wasn’t exactly impossible to predict
(though it does not contain algae).
Others thought our food’s content would be more or less the same, but that its scale
would change dramatically. In 1900, John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. wrote in The Ladies’ Home Journal
that we’d sink our teeth into strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries “as large as
apples,” and peas and beans would be as big as beets. Why would anybody want to eat
beet-sized peas in the first place, you ask? Beats me.
If you think Watkins, Jr. was prone to exaggeration, it was nothing compared to what George Serviss
dreamed up. In a 1956 article from the Independent Press-Telegram’s magazine Southland, Serviss
imagined a farm from the year 2000 where hydrogen bombs caused the soil to produce 3-foot-long
carrots, 4-foot-wide turnips, and basketball-sized tomatoes.
Watkins, Jr. also believed that we’d completely get rid of the letters C, X, and Q. Instead,
spelling would be based on sound alone, so those three letters would presumably be replaced
by S’s and K’s. As crazy (that’s crazy spelled with a c) as this may seem, Benjamin
Franklin and Noah Webster *had* advocated for spelling reform in the 18th and 19th centuries.
And just six years after Watkins Jr. published his 21st-century predictions, steel magnate
Andrew Carnegie created the Simplified Spelling Board to revamp the English language. Despite
then-President Theodore Roosevelt’s best efforts, spelling remains largely un-simplified
today, which you can probably tell if you’ve seen me try to pronounce some of the more
complicated words that come up in the List Show. By the way: we discussed TR’s quest
for simplified spelling in our podcast, History Vs.—there’s a link in the description
if you’re interested in hearing more.
On January 6, 1910, Iowa’s Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette published an article that
predicted people would be able to make it rain within the next century—which we actually
*can* kind of do. Through a process called cloud seeding, silver iodide particles are
injected into clouds, and water collects around them to form precipitation.
Its effectiveness is debated, however, and it’s still a far cry from where futurists
thought we’d be by the 21st century. In a 1950 article from Popular Mechanics, Valdemar
Kaempffert imagined that hurricanes would be an utter nonissue by the year 2000. Upon
spotting one over the ocean, Kaempffert thought we’d ignite a large oil fire across the
water, drawing air from the surrounding region and putting an end to the hurricane…somehow.
He believed we’d be able to divert storms, putting an end to flight delays. Oh Waldemar,
would that it were so simple.
Other fantasies of controlling the weather were even more vague and less scientifically
sound. In 1900, a German chocolate company called Theodore Hildebrand unt zoon released
a series of illustrated cards with its best 21st-century predictions. One of them depicted
a “good weather machine” simply blowing a storm back over the ocean. That same year,
The Boston Globe suggested that we’d be able to generate a nice easterly wind whenever
it got too hot outside.
Isaac Asimov didn’t think we’d be able to conquer the elements, but he did think
we’d do a better job of avoiding them. He envisioned vast underground cities where advanced
light technology could mimic outdoor ambiences, and the earth’s surface would be used for
agriculture, grazing grounds, and parks. He was a bit off the mark, but an underground
park dubbed “the lowline” *is* supposedly set to debut in New York next year. Asimov
thought we could be well on our way to living underwater by the early 2000s, too, which
he felt would especially appeal to those who enjoy water sports.
And predictions about 21st-century water sports went far beyond the traditional sailing, surfing,
and swimming you’re probably picturing. Between 1899 and 1910, French artist Jean-Marc
Côté and his contemporaries produced almost 100 highly fanciful illustrations of the year
2000. On one, deep-sea divers ride giant seahorses. Another depicts a whale pulling a bus full
of people through the sea. Yet another shows a crowd of onlookers cheering as jockeys race
by on the backs of enormous fish. Côté and his fellow artists might be disappointed if
they knew we weren’t yet spending all our free time underwater, but they’d probably
give Aquaman a five-star review. Which sea creature would you want to ride to work? I
think I’d pick a giant isopod.
Those early 20th-century French illustrations were big on air travel, too. The images show
just about every type of aircraft you can possibly imagine. There’s one that looks
like a hot air balloon basket attached to a helicopter propeller, and another is just
a ship attached to two Zeppelin-like aircrafts. There’s also a number of individual flying
machines for police, firefighters, and regular citizens. Those are the really fun ones—they
look like they have actual animal wings attached to them.
During the early 20th century, many people predicted a future that saw air travel as
the primary mode of transportation. This probably wasn’t a coincidence, since the earliest
planes were taking off around this time. The Wright brothers’ famous first flight happened
on December 17, 1903. About 10 years later, the first commercial flight carried a whopping
one passenger from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa.
The flight only covered around 20 miles, but that didn’t deter some people from dreaming
big about 21st-century aviation. One of them was Frederick Edwin Smith, Britain’s former
Lord Chancellor and a close personal friend of Winston Churchill. In 1930, Smith published
a book called The World in 2030 A.D., in which he imagined that each person would own a small
airplane ideal for weekend trips. He wrote that, quote, “Ski-ing parties in Greenland
will be made up in London clubs on Saturday mornings, and translated into action before
the same evening.”
Personal planes were one of Smith’s more mundane predictions. He also thought we might
build a canal to funnel water from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sahara Desert. Because portions
of the desert are below sea level, this would create what he called a “new Riviera”
with “fertile charm” to rival Florida and the beaches of southern France.
And by 2030, Smith hoped that men would have revolted against what he considered farcical,
excessively complicated, and unhygienic clothing. Instead, they’d have only three simple outfits:
one for work, one for recreation, and a third for formal occasions.
Robert Heinlein thought clothing would be on the outs altogether. Covering up would
be reserved for strangers and conservative old relatives, and psychiatrists would actually
recommend casual nakedness around the house.
Heinlein also predicted that by the 1990s, the United States would have passed a constitutional
amendment that completely abolished state lines. Asimov thought that Boston, Washington,
D.C., and the area in between would have merged into one giant city, with a population of
more than 40 million people. That hasn’t happened, but the population of the Boston
to Washington corridor did clock in around 50 million people in 2010.
You’ve likely seen moving sidewalks in airports and train stations, but they never became
quite as popular as people of the past expected they would. The Columbian Movable Sidewalk
Company debuted the first one at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. It still holds
the Guinness World Record for “Longest moving walkway ever.” Paris’s Exposition Universelle
featured another (shorter) moving walkway in 1900. Subsequent attempts to install them
in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston all failed, due to maintenance concerns,
weather issues, and also, possibly, the simple fact that they’re just not very efficient.
They have to move slowly so that people can hop on safely—more slowly, in fact, than
normal walking speed. And, as Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out, people tend to just stand
there like it’s a ride.
And if you think it’s frustrating to stand behind people on a moving sidewalk at the
airport, you might have had a tough time with those early iterations. The version at Chicago’s
World’s Fair had benches to sit on. The one in Paris didn’t have seats built in
to the moving part of the sidewalk, but as Electrical World said in a 1900 feature, “…visitors
are beginning to find this out and take their own stools and camp chairs.” So these moving
sidewalks acted kind of like a train, but slower, and without protection from the elements.
Though with all those predictions about our ability to control the weather, I guess that
didn’t seem like a problem.
In a 1788 letter to Reverend John Lathrop, Benjamin Franklin shared his theory that within
a few centuries, we’d be living as long as the biblical patriarchs from the Book of
Genesis. Noah, of ark fame, supposedly lived to be 950 years old. And his grandfather,
Methuselah, is said to have died when he was 969.
As for what a 900-year-old person might look or feel like, Franklin didn’t speculate.
Robert Heinlein, on the other hand, imagined that nursing homes on the moon could slow
signs of aging. Because the moon has just 17 percent of the gravity found on earth,
Heinlein thought frail joints would ache less and weak hearts wouldn’t have to work so
hard. By Heinlein’s best estimates moon-dwellers would be able to reach a cool 120 years old.
Speaking of not having to work so hard, Heinlein also dreamed up a much easier way to clean
houses. He called it a “whirlwind,” which would automatically whisk dust right out of
the house at regular intervals. If you’re thinking that might bother you while you’re
sleeping, eating, or doing, ya know, anything else, Heinlein had an answer to that, too.
The machine would only operate when it didn’t detect any masses radiating heat at body temperature.
Kaempffert thought we’d be able to clean our houses simply by turning the hose on.
He predicted that everything from the furniture to the drapes would be manufactured from synthetic
fabric or waterproof plastic. After rinsing everything down the water would disappear
through a drain, and then a blast of hot air would dry it all off, kind of like a car-wash.
Households might not yet have automatic cleaning machines, and personal aircraft are still
pretty rare, but these kinds of ambitious predictions have given birth to an artistic
style known as retrofuturism. Basically, some modern-day buildings, furniture, and other
goods are designed to look how people of the past *imagined* they would look in the future.
Pixar’s 2004 film The Incredibles is a great example of retrofuturism—director Brad Bird
said he saw the world as a reflection of what people in the 1960s believed it would turn
out to be like.
An Associated Press article from 1950 made the bold claim that we’d have our first
man-made star in space by the year 2000. Its surface would reflect sunlight, and it would
orbit the Earth from 400 to 500 miles away. To put that in perspective, the moon maintains
an average distance from the Earth of almost 240,000 miles. But the article also describes
the star as a spaceship, so maybe the writer just didn’t understand what a star actually
*is*. In that case, their predictions weren’t quite so outlandish—the International Space
Station orbits Earth from around 248 miles away.
Finally, that article also anticipated “four-dimensional,” dome-shaped movie theaters with the action
unfolding on screens all around you. If a character stepped into the street on the screen
in front of you, you’d have to look behind you to see if a car was coming. Virtual reality
experiences continue to move in the direction of this type of 360 degree immersion, but
the 3D glasses we use in theaters today don’t really have the same effect.
Our next episode is about strange crimes that you might be committing. Comment below with
your favorite silly law that people might not know about for a chance to be featured
in that episode. It’ll be out February 19th. Subscribe here so you don’t miss it. We’ll
see you then!