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1900-1949 1950-1999 Future Predictions Victorian

Predictions for The Year 2000

Going to school in the 1980s, the year 2000 was a popular subject for homework on predictions about the state of the world by the turn of the new millennium. It was just far enough away to be an effective exercise, but soon enough in our lifetimes to guess at where things were heading.

I remember going on a school trip to Hastings when I was about 10, in the mid-80s, where we visited what I remember to be some kind of cave. In one of the walls there was an arrow half-buried in the stone, point-first, Excalibur-like. The guide told us that the arrow pointed to a chamber where a copy of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that described the death of King Harold was buried, and that this time capsule was due to be opened in the year 2000. Of course, it would have to be opened very carefully, as the delicate paper of the document could likely crumble to dust. This I found to be extremely frustrating – just open it now, while I’m here, I thought, not at some point in the distant future, when I’m the grand old age of 26! I can’t imagine that far ahead!

I’ve always remembered this trip and the desire to see exactly what was buried in the wall, and I’ve tried a number of times to search on the internet to see if it was indeed opened in 2000. Oddly, I can’t find any reference to it at all, and now I wonder if it was real at all, or just some kind of faux-tourist attraction.

Later, in 1990, my class were asked to write an essay about “The World in Ten Years Time”. I found it in an old schoolbook a few years ago and I was left slightly thunderstruck on reading it again. Alongside my predictions about the Queen Mother having died (I thought, wrongly, that was a certainty) and stamps having been abolished for some reason, I had written that Princess Diana had died in a car crash in 1997, with a mysterious unidentified car being involved in some way. Funnily enough, I remember writing the bits about the Queen Mother and the stamps, but had no memory of writing about Princess Di at all. Extremely peculiar. And now, after my parents moved house, I don’t know where that book is, so I can prove exactly nothing.

Still – predictions of the year 2000 have been going on for a long time. Here’s a handful, as they appeared in the local press over the last couple of hundred years.

I wonder when the first year 2000 prediction happened? I certainly haven’t seen one earlier than this, from the 1833 Taunton Courier, although I bet there’s loads of Age of Enlightenment philosophers that considered it.

“An Author of Romance, foreshadowing the events of the year 2000, among other wonders, predicts that pens will write of themselves; and the Patentee of the Hydraulic Pen may be said to have all but accomplished the anticipated miracle. The invention will be invaluable to book-keepers, authors, and reporters; to all, especially, who wish to keep a clean hand either in court or counting house.”

I think they mean a non-dipping pen, an alternative to the quill and inky fingers, so a successful prediction there, what with ink cartridges and biros.

The Taunton Courier, 17th July 1833
The Taunton Courier, 17th July 1833

 

The Hull Daily Mail in 1901 told a joke about the battle of the sexes in the year 2000, and the shocking notion of women wearing trousers, inspired by the Suffragette movement.

“Here,” said the husband of the New Woman, entering a tailor shop and laying a bundle on the counter, “you will have to alter these trousers. I can’t wear them as they are.”

“Really,” replied the tailor, as he opened the bundle, “you must excuse me, my dear sir, those are your wife’s.”

Women now wear trousers – correct.

Hull Daily Mail, 6th June 1901
Hull Daily Mail, 6th June 1901

 

The Yorkshire Evening Post of 1936 had a surprising article on predicted population growth by 2000. Instead of overcrowding and spiralling numbers, Dr S.K. Young of Durham thought that the birth rate would fall on account of women joining the workplace (if this is what he means by “amazons”) and what’s more, being needed in the workplace.

His calculations figured that the population of the whole of the UK in 2000 would be no more than that of 1936 London (which was around 4.3 million). This wasn’t a crazy thought – the population of London had indeed been decreasing since the turn of the century and the birth rate of the UK was about as low as it has ever been in 1936. 1920 still holds the record for the highest birth rate and it had tumbled dramatically over the next decade so it was a justifiable, if incorrect prediction – the population of London alone is now 8.5 million.  Some interesting information on the ups and downs of the UK birth rate and baby booms is here.

Yorkshire Evening Post, 4th December 1936
Yorkshire Evening Post, 4th December 1936

 

Still in The Yorkshire Evening Post, the paper published a quite detailed consideration of what 2000 might look like. It was December 1949 and the imminent new year bringing the second half of the twentieth century with it, provoked a look ahead at what this half-century would bring.

Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949
Yorkshire Post, 30th December 1949

 

Here it is in more detail. It predicts “Extensive use of helicopters to take business men almost from doorstep to doorstep; The disappearance of trams from city roads; Segregation of different forms of traffic; A tendency for housing and industry to be concentrated in more compact areas to conserve agricultural land; In the home, television, refrigerators, washing machines and labour-saving devices as commonplace as radios; Open fireplaces replaced by cleaner and more economic forms of heating.”

Apart from the helicopters, this is pretty astute predicting. Although the death knell of most of the trams was pretty evident by then.

And finally, still from The Yorkshire Evening Post, comes a prediction from 1955. The British Newspaper Archive only goes up to the mid-50s, and I expect as the century went on, there were many more such articles.

Here, an exhibition at Olympia which envisioned a 2000-era Soho is described. It’s a very futuristic vision, “a city clothed in glass“, edging towards the kind of dystopian future seen in 1960s and 70s sci-fi. Soho is encased in a glass dome, on top of which (on top!) are 24-storey blocks of flats, made of glass in the shape of stars.  Helicopters land on the roof of those flats, and there is no traffic, people getting around by gondola on a system of canals.

“A rather soulful commentary….added a hope that man, in this new Soho environment, “might be no longer vile”. The paper concludes that while “Soho at rooftop height looked uncomfortably like Aldous Huxley’s vision in “Brave New World”, it was more interesting than some of the features seen in “the bad old one”. Although this didn’t come to pass, it was successful if boiled down to the essential fact that glass was probably the most important feature of architecture in the second half of the century.

The Yorkshire Post, 17th November 1955
The Yorkshire Post, 17th November 1955

In short – I think the transport systems of today might come as a bit of a disappointment to the people of the past. Not too many personal helicopters and gondolas.

This is an area I could research for years, really. I’m endlessly fascinated by future predictions – and I’m especially amused by the not-entirely-serious 100 years of fashion I found in an old Strand magazine here, and one of my favourite childhood books on what life would be like in 2010 here.

I’ve got a rather strange prediction for the year 2000 in a book of inventions from 1949 too, now I come to think of it. I’ll need to dig that out…..

Categories
1900-1949 Ephemera Future Predictions Space

The Edge of the Universe, 1922

This is my copy of The Children’s Newspaper from June 10th, 1922. I confess to mainly buying it as that date is also my birthday. The June 10th bit anyway, not the 1922 part.

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922

A couple of interesting, on-the-brink-of-discovery, articles in this. Firstly this one, which talks of the difficulties before nuclear energy becomes possible:

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922

But this one I find fascinating, given just how near it lurks to a reality-altering discovery.

A very distant star cluster, N.G.C. 7006, had been observed by astronomers, and was thought to be 220,000 light years from Earth (it’s now measured as being 135,000 light years away). The Children’s Newspaper wonders if this, possibly the most distant thing yet seen, is actually on the edge of the universe. In a way they were right, given that the Milky Way was then actually the known universe – this star cluster is on the outskirts of our own galaxy. The concept of other galaxies was still undiscovered. But not for long. In fact, it was the very next year, 1923, that Edwin Hubble, one of my all-time heroes, concluded that the extremely distant Andromeda star cluster was actually the Andromeda galaxy. One of those shifts in perception that fundamentally change the way we view the universe as a whole, and an incredible mental feat.

He expanded our idea of what the universe is, and then followed that up in 1929 with the discovery that the universe was actually expanding to boot. Whaddaguy.

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922
Categories
1950-1999 Future Predictions

2010 Living in the Future, 1972

Future predictions again, and this is the one I grew up with.

2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972
2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972

“2010 – Living in the Future” is a peaceful, soothing image of the future from 1972, by Geoffrey Hoyle, son of the eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle (the man who coined the term, “The Big Bang”, despite not believing in that theory himself).

I had this as a discarded library book as a child and it was one of my favourites. On the one hand, I was willing to believe that its predictions were very likely to come true. On the other, I kind of knew a lot of them wouldn’t as it would really involve the whole world being rebuilt anew, which seemed unlikely. Not only unlikely, but it was also an awful concept that old buildings, streets and the tangible traces of history would be destroyed.

It’s a product of its time in that a fairly communal style of living is hinted at, a 3 day week is still seen as the end product of technology taking over many aspects of life (if only!), and the reassuring, “it’s fine” vision of how things turn out is probably a reaction to the pessimism of the future that was pretty widespread at this point, after decades of US involvement in one war or another, and the image of nuclear war that hovered over the decade.

But it’s also very well done in many respects. Geoffrey Hoyle utterly gets the importance of computers in people’s everyday lives, in a way that even people working in the computer industry at the time didn’t always appreciate. Things like internet shopping, e-readers and watching films on computer are anticipated. Perhaps one day, school will be like this, all distance learning by webcam – although playtime would be pretty rubbish.

Incidentally, here in Liverpool, people cracked the multicoloured jumpsuit-the-whole-year-round thing way back in the 80s.

There’s a little catch up with Geoffrey Hoyle in 2010 here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12058575

I didn’t realise they’d reprinted the book in 2010. A nice touch. And I find it very funny they reprinted it with the title 2011 instead, so it’s still in the future.

(It reminds me of the obscure 90s comedy series Focus North, where they predict that everyone in 2011 wears silver capes, swears a lot and has webbed hands, yet in a flashback to 2009, none of that had happened yet.)

Categories
Future Predictions Victorian

Fashion Forward, 1893

Possibly my favourite thing in books is predictions of the future, when their future is your now. It’s a fascinating little insight into the minds of the time, extending on what surrounds them in their present. Sometimes this is strikingly insightful, sometimes it’s just bonkers.

And so here is a rather marvellous, not entirely serious, article from The Strand Magazine, 1893. “Future Dictates of Fashion”, predicted from 1893-1993. What I think it largely shows is that minimalism and simplicity were fairly unimaginable concepts to this particular Victorian. Also, god only knows what they would have made of the actual short skirts that came into fashion long ago themselves now. And the possibility of hat-wearing not being all-but-compulsory anymore.

Interestingly, there is a brief aside on tobacco which just might possibly have been the most ridiculous thing the author was intending.

Apart from that, pretty spot on. I know I was wearing something very similar in 1993. My favourite here would have to be the Mikado-style policeman’s uniform from 1960….