In 1900, a civil engineer wrote an article in Ladies Home Journal, making predictions about things that would happen within the next 100 years. The BBC scores him.
My favorite correct one:
The Acela Express
“Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains one hundred and fifty miles per hour.”
Exactly 100 years after writing those words, to the very month, Amtrak’s flagship high-speed rail line, the Acela Express, opened between Boston and Washington, DC. It reaches top speeds of 150mph, although the average speed is considerably less than that. High-speed rail in other parts of the world, even in 2000, was considerably faster.
And my favorite incorrect one:
No more C, X or Q
“There will be no C, X or Q in our everyday alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.”
This was obviously wrong, says Patrick Tucker of the World Future Society, but also remarkable in the way that it hints at the possible effects of mass communication on communication itself.
No more C, X, or Q? Heh, how quixotic.
520 Chestnut 
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