J. Elfreth Watkins

John Elfreth Watkins (1852–1903) was a civil engineer working for American railroads of the 19th century. He played a key role in the preservation of the John Bull steam locomotive and its subsequent public displays by the Smithsonian Institution.

After suffering a disabling accident in 1873, he became a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in 1885 became a curator at the transport section of the Smithsonian. In 1900, he contributed an article to the Ladies' Home Journal, entitled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years, in which he predicted that:

• "Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later... photographs will reproduce all of nature's colours."
• "Americans will be taller by from one to two inches."
• "Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn."
• "Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries of today."
• "There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America [implying the US plus Panama and Mexico]."
• "Vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants to grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of coloured light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early."
• "Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span."
• "Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of today."
• "Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren."
• "Trains will run two miles a minute normally. Express trains one hundred and fifty miles per hour."
• "Physicians will be able to see and diagnose internal organs of a moving, living body by rays of invisible light."

While many of the predictions listed above have come true, at least in part, other predictions were less accurate:

• "There will be no C, X or Q in our everyday alphabet. English spelling will reflect pronounciation."
• "Anyone unable to walk 10 miles in a stretch will be considered a weakling."
• "All hurry traffic will be below or above ground when brought within city limits."
• "Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been exterminated."

References

• John Elfreth Watkins, Jr What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years The Ladies' Home Journal
• Massa, William R., Jr., Smithsonian Institution (2004) Finding Aids to Personal Papers and Special Collections in the Smithsonian Institution Archives: Record Unit 7268; J. Elfreth Watkins Collection, 1869, 1881-1903, 1953, 1966 and undated, Retrieved March 3, 2008.
• Genealogy information