Famous predictions about the future that turned out to be dead wrong

At the start of each year, experts in different fields like to make predictions about the future. Be it for the next year, 10 years from now or 50, some turn out to be true, but others are proven to be dead wrong.

If you’re worried about the future, maybe this list of famous predictions that turned out to be wrong will serve as a reminder that the future is not set in stone.

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In 1920, The New York Times published an article saying that a rocket would never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.

Based on Robert H. Goddard’s ideas, an engineer and rocket pioneer, they argued that space flight was impossible because there was nothing in the cosmic void for the exhaust to push against.

In 1932, Albert Einstein, one of the most influential physicists of all times said: “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”

But ten years later, in 1942, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi achieved the first nuclear chain reaction showing that neutrons could split atoms.

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb in 1880, Henry Morton, the president of Stevens Institute of Technology, said that it would turn out to be a “conspicuous failure.”

It’s said banker Junius Morgan told his son J.P. Morgan not to invest in Edison’s invention. Luckily for him, he didn’t listen to his dad’s advice.

J.P.instead hired Edison to wire up his mansion, making it the first private residence in New York to have electric lighting and invested heavily in it, eventually financing General Electric.

Another invention that was thought to be just a ‘fad’, a craze with no real future, was the car.

In 1903, the president of Michigan Savings Bank warned Henry Ford’s lawyer Horace Rackham to protect his money. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad,” he advised.

In 1904, The New York Times reported on a debate in Paris between a brain specialist and a physician about the dangers of driving automobiles at high speeds because the brain can’t keep up.

“If the brain cannot acquire an eight-mile per hour speed, then an auto running at the rate of 80 miles per hour is running without the guidance of the brain, and the many disastrous results are not to be marveled at,” they said.

Yet another invention that was thought to have no future is the T.V. The 20^th Century Fox kingpin Darryl Zanuck said television wouldn’t be able to hold onto any market after the first six months. “People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night,” he said.

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A lot of futuristic drawings from the past show cities made of steel, and inventor Thomas Edison shared this view of the future world. In an interview with the Miami Metropolis in 1911, he went all in on America’s booming steel production…

“The baby of the 21st century will be rocked in a steel cradle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel dining table, and his mother’s boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings, converted by cunning varnishes to the semblance of rosewood, or mahogany, or any other wood her ladyship fancies,” he predicted.

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In 1906, composer John Philip Sousa warned the world about “The Menace of Mechanical Music” in an article attacking machines that brought symphonies into people’s homes.

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“It will be simply a question of time when the amateur musician  disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling.”

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Waldemar Kaempffert, the science editor of the New York Times, wrote in 1950 an article titled “Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years.” One of them involved housekeeping.

Kaempffert talked of a universal cleaning appliance that could look like a hose. He described the life and chores of a future housewife he named “Jane Dobson”. “When Jane Dobson cleans the house, she simply turns the hose on everything”.

“Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors, all made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor, Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything.”

Though we now have robots that vacuum or cook, we’re far from having one universal housekeeping appliance. If anything, we just seem to have more appliances that do different but specific tasks.

In 1966, Time magazine published an essay called “The Futurists” that looked ahead to life in the year 2000. One thing they thought would be rejected by humankind is online shopping.

“While entirely feasible, online shopping will flop because women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds,” the essay said.

While it’s true that many people like to go shopping in stores still, e-commerce is now ingrained in our capitalist world, more so after Covid-19. Proof is Amazon’s profits increased nearly 200% since the start of the pandemic.