Electricity Sparks
the Imagination
In 1881, at the dawn of the
Electrical Age, Paris hosted the first International Exposition of Electricity
with exhibits by such still-familiar names as Edison, Bell and Siemens. Light bulbs, telephones, batteries and
generators were all on display. The
telephone, phonograph and light bulb had all been recently invented, but were not yet commercially viable. Future technology was just beginning to take
shape.
The exposition sparked the
imagination of a writer who, within weeks of the exposition, published a
remarkable essay that predicted, with uncanny accuracy, many of the features of
the world we live in today. The article, The Year
of Grace 2081 – a Forecast of How Affairs Will be Conducted Two Hundred Years
Hence, (The London Truth, reprinted in a
number of American newspapers, e.g. Dodge City Times, November 3, 1881; The Pulaski Citizen, December 15, 1881), reflected on the technological changes of the preceding two-hundred years and imagined the changes that might
occur during the following two-hundred years.
Remarkably, nearly every one of his predictions has already come true,
in one form or another. One big
mistake was his prediction that the use of coal would be
abandoned. He predicted that electricity
would be provided by chemical batteries at every home, instead of by centralized
generation and distribution of electricity generated by coal. But he was right in predicting that people would no longer have to store coal at home and that trains and factories would no longer have to burn coal locally.
Granted, many of his predictions
are expressed with a Victorian, Steam-Punk aesthetic that does not quite match
our modern world, but considering that he lived in the Victorian age, his
predictive powers were remarkable. The
essay is also notable in that it includes one of the earliest known uses of the
word Martian (as a noun to describe beings from Mars) and the first-knownfictional account of an invasion from Mars (as opposed to all of the true
accounts) pre-dating H. G. Wells’ War of
the Worlds by fifteen years.- Door Bells
- Home Security Systems
- Electricity in every house
- Answering machine
- Video Chat
- Electronic Banking
- Fax
- Internet Cafes
- The Incessant Inter-connectedness of the Digital Age
- RemoteKissing Machines
- Electric Milking Machines
- Microwave Ovens
- Increased Crop Yields and Improved Nutrition
- Recycling
- Air Conditioning and Heating Systems
- High-speed, Long-distance Air travel
- Pressure Suits for High Altitude Flight (talk to me goose!)
- Air Warfare
- Global Thermonuclear War (Would you like to play a nicegame of chess WOPR?)
The Year of Grace 2081 – a Forecast of How Affairs
Will be Conducted Two
Hundred Years Hence
It
would have been thought a pretty conceit in Charles II.’s reign to talk of
bringing water into every household by means of leaden piping, and even Lord Worcester,
in his “Century of Inventions,” never imagined anything so fantastic as
fantastic as the conveying of combustible gas by such a method; but we have
become used now to marvels, and can easily foresee the time when every house
will have its electric battery, serving manifold purposes, and when most of the
things done for us at present by steam will be performed by electricity. . We
have no occasion to worry ourselves about the possible exhaustion of the coal
mines. Long before the last scuttleful
of coals is drawn up from the last shaft, coal will have ceased to be applied
to most of its present uses.
In
the house of the future there will be no knocking at doors and summoning up
servants every time a visitor calls. The
visitor will touch a button that will sound a bell, and then he will speak
through a tube: “Is Mr. Brown at home?”
Answer, “No.” Instead of dropping
his card Mr. Robinson will say that he leaves his compliments with kind
inquiries; and these words passing down the tube into the orifice of the
phonographs, will engrave themselves on a roll of tinfoil.
When
the lady of the house comes home she will turn the handle of her phonograph,
and hear, in the very voices of her visitors, what they had to say: “I am Mr. Jones, who has called for the third
time to know if it is convenient for you to pay that little bill,” and so
on. Supposing Mrs. Brown to be short of
funds, she may want to communicate with her husband in Bengal. How?
By letter, or by the present slow and roundabout telegraphs? Oh, no!
Brown, as he goes out to dine with some friends, will be called back by
his servant saying: “Missis wants to
speak to you, sir; there’s her bell ringing,” and B., returning to his study –
let us hope with cheerful alacrity – will see the form of his consort projected
into his presence by means of the Pepper and Dirk’s apparatus acting in
conjunction with electric wires. Brown
will forthwith project his own presentment into Mrs. B.’s London boudoir, and
the conversation will commence through the telephone.
“Please,
dear, send me a check for 20 Pounds this instant.”
“Here
it is, my dear,” and Brown, taking up his electric stylus, fastened to a wire,
will write on tinfoil a draft which will be reproduced word for word, including
his signature, on a corresponding piece of metal thousands of miles off.
The
best of this system will be that it will enable ladies to administer curtain
lectures [(a
scolding)] at incalculable distances,
for you must remember that, although Brown might possibly like to dispense with
such fruits of science, there will be an electric bell at the head of his bed
which will leave him no peace until he starts up and says meekly, with his ear
to the telephone: “Now, my dear, I’m listening.” He will gain nothing by taking himself out of
doors either, for will not his wife be able to speak into his phonograph, so
that the first time he sets that instrument spinning her words will burst forth
in an affectionate torrent, interspersed with sobs!
It
is pleasant to reflect, however, that Brown will be able to make peace by
transmitting a kiss through the wires.
We, to-day, transmit sounds and shocks to a great distance; why should
not our descendants forward pleasant sensations by electricity?
No
doubt some time will elapse before every house will be fitted up with a perfect
electrical apparatus; but when these contrivances get fairly established in the
dwellings of the rich, there will be public electrical offices for persons of
small means. Cannot we imagine that such
an office would be with its vast hall, its rows of batteries in compartments
like pews, and its crowds of people streaming in to correspond with friends far
away?
We
may picture a country couple coming in to have a talk with their daughter in
Australia: “Do you want to see her or
only to speak to her?” asks the clerk.
The old couple hesitate, for it costs ten shillings more to set the
Pepper process in motion; but a wistful look passes over the mother’s face, and
the father winks to the clerk: “Aye, we must see the lass,” and after the delay
necessary to call Betty from her electrical dairy, where she is milking twelve cows all at once by the
Messrs. Puller’s “Artificial Dairymaid” (patented), she will burst into the
little box all rosy, smiling and crying, too, may be, with the halo of the
electrical light round her.
It
cannot be doubted that our descendants will shoot electric currents through
their chops and steaks and bring them up fizzing in a minute. The Frenchman’s cotellette a la minute will then become a reality.
All
the produce of the earth – corn, fruit, flowers, vegetables – will be
cultivated by a happy combination of the sun and electricity acting in
concert. When the sun is coy, the
batteries, with their systems of colored glasses for intensifying the various
properties of the sun’s rays, will go to work, and there will be no more talk
of backward potatoes then than there will be of backward boys. The sluggish vegetable, startled to its very
root by galvanic currents will have to wake up and take its vivifying bath of
warmth streaming through revolving glasses of red, blue and yellow; . . .
.
. . and it will be a bad time for slugs, snails, caterpillars and worms, who
only exist at present to consume what man wastes. Man will waste nothing when he grows to be
more knowing; and, of course, the schools of the future will have their systems
for removing the effects of Nature and inflating the brains of children to
something like uniform size.
At
present we see children stunted, who would grow up finely if they could live in
a sunny climate, and young adults are dying all around us of consumption
because they cannot afford to go to Madeira.
But will it be impossible 200 or 500 years hence to bring the climate of
Madeira to London by the help of the batteries and colored glasses before
mentioned? There will be huge
sanitariums built, like the Crystal Palace, and containing dwelling houses,
hotels, theaters and gardens, where the weak and the aged will live and disport
themselves. In one the climate will be
warm, in another bracing, and the managers will announce that they have
arranged to bring the benefits of their unrivaled establishment (please observe
the address) within reach of the smallest purses.
At
the same time means of locomotion will be largely increased, so that it will be
possible to reach any part of the globe within
twelve hours. The principle of
moving balloons by electricity has already been discovered; it only remains to
manufacture an apparatus which shall be light enough, as well as strong enough,
to be carried up high, and to send a big mass of silk, cordage and car whizzing
through the air. When this difficulty
has been surmounted, Brown, from Bengal, wishing to spend from Saturday to
Monday with his wife in London, will step into an aerial car and be wafted
hither with his nose in the Messrs. Breathers’ “Artificial Respirator”
(patented), so that he may not lose his wind in the velocity of his transit.
But
what about standing armies and the rivalry between Nations under the
forthcoming dispensation? Well, it is
highly probable that before the people of this earth consent to live at amity
they will conscientiously try all the appliances of science for the destruction
of one another. There will be awful
battles, first at sea with torpedoes, then on land with electrical artillery
and dynamite shells, which will hash whole army corps into bits, and finally
the aerial navies of this world will smash each other heartily in the
clouds. After this, when they have done
one another all the harm they can, the people of the earth may take rest and
agree that war is a poor way of killing time; but let Generals and jingoes take
heart. By the time Nations have begun to
enjoy universal peace some method will have been discovered of putting this
globe in communication with our nearest neighbor, the planet Mars, and it is
easy to imagine what will follow then.
After a brief period passed in the exchange of polite messages it will
be unanimously admitted that our globular honor demands that we should declare
against Mars. Possibly it will be found
that our Martian foes are more advanced in science than we, and that the
variations in our climate result from some unjustifiable liberties which they
have been taking with the sun by focusing all its rays for themselves. We cannot expect that our descendants will
stand this; so they will unite all their energies for the fabrication of
mammoth engines which will discharge oceans of water, metal and fire right into
the face of Mars. In return, the
Martians will pelt them with aeroliths weighing three thousand tons, which will
chip whole mountains off the Himalayas and make a big hole where Mont Blanc now
exists. It may not be forbidden us to
hope for a blessed time in the future, when all the planets will be in
communion and plunged in continual wars, to end, of course, in universal peace. Then, doubtless, man will have mastered all
that he is to know, and will be ripe for other destinies which we cannot even
guess at. Giants will once more inhabit
the earth – giants of culture, no more dressed in skins and wielding clubs –
and we, their pigmy forefathers, with our small heads and hearts and our puny
doings, will not be so much as remembered among them.
The
London Truth
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