The Man Who Predicted the Future in 1900 — And Somehow Got Strawberries Wrong But Smartphones Right

In the waning months of 1900, a civil engineer named John Elfreth Watkins Jr. did what any reasonable man of his era would do when faced with the dawn of a new century: he made a list. Not a grocery list. Not a list of grievances about the price of coal. A list of confident, sweeping, go-big-or-go-home predictions about what daily American life would look like in the year 2000.

The piece ran in the Ladies' Home Journal — because of course it did — under the modest headline "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years." Watkins acknowledged upfront that many of his predictions would "seem absurd." Reader, he had no idea.

Let's go through the tape.

The Scorecard: Watkins vs. Reality

PREDICTION: "There will be no C, X, or Q in our everyday alphabet."

VERDICT: ❌ Catastrophically Wrong

Watkins believed that by 2000, spelling reformers would have successfully streamlined the English language, eliminating letters deemed redundant. The letter C, he figured, was basically just K and S wearing a trench coat. Fair point, honestly. But Americans did not streamline their alphabet. Americans cannot even agree on how to pronounce "GIF." The letters C, X, and Q are alive, well, and thriving — Q just got a whole new career in internet conspiracy theories, which Watkins absolutely did not see coming.

PREDICTION: Strawberries will be the size of apples.

VERDICT: ❌ Wrong, Though Not For Lack of Trying

Watkins foresaw agricultural science producing fruits of almost comical proportions. He specifically called out strawberries growing to the size of apples. Now, modern agriculture has produced some impressively large strawberries — Japan has entered the chat with its $6-a-berry luxury fruit — but your average American supermarket strawberry remains, stubbornly, strawberry-sized. The dream lives on. The reality does not.

PREDICTION: "Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance."

VERDICT: ✅ Shockingly Correct (With Footnotes)

Okay, so he didn't predict Instagram. But he did predict that images would be transmitted across vast distances instantaneously. In 1900. When the dominant communication technology was a man on a horse. Give this one a partial win and a slow clap.

PREDICTION: Americans will eat pre-cooked meals delivered to their homes.

VERDICT: ✅ Correct, and He Deserves a Cut of DoorDash's Revenue

Watkins described a future in which hot, prepared food would be delivered directly to households with minimal effort from the consumer. In 2024, Americans spent over $40 billion on food delivery apps. John Elfreth Watkins was not wrong. John Elfreth Watkins was owed money.

PREDICTION: "Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes."

VERDICT: ✅ Correct, Except Nobody's Streaming Grand Opera

The concept? Nailed it. Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, YouTube — all of it represents audio and visual entertainment piped directly into private residences on demand. The specific content Watkins imagined people would want? Less accurate. Americans are streaming true crime podcasts and a reality show where people get married without meeting first. But the infrastructure? Spot on.

PREDICTION: "No mosquitoes nor flies" will exist in American cities.

VERDICT: ❌ A Fantasy That Haunts Every July Barbecue

Watkins believed modern science and sanitation would simply... eliminate mosquitoes. From existence. By the year 2000. Anyone who has attended a summer cookout in New Jersey would like a word.

PREDICTION: "A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."

VERDICT: ❌ This Has Not Happened

Watkins envisioned a physically vigorous future population, hardened by clean living and fresh air, for whom a casual ten-mile stroll would be table stakes. The average American walks about 3,000 to 4,000 steps per day. That's roughly 1.5 miles. We have not met the bar, John.

And Now, The Part Where We Owe This Man an Apology

PREDICTION: "A man in the Antipodes may in the future speak to a friend in Iceland as he could to-day speak to a person in the same house... Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world."

VERDICT: ✅✅✅ HE DESCRIBED THE SMARTPHONE IN 1900

Stop. Read that again.

In the year 1900 — a year in which air conditioning did not exist, in which the average American life expectancy was 47 years, in which the Wright Brothers had not yet flown anything — John Elfreth Watkins sat down and described, with remarkable specificity, the concept of wireless global communication between individuals.

He didn't just predict the telephone would get better. He predicted that a person could speak to someone on the literal opposite side of the planet, wirelessly, as casually as talking to someone in the same room. That is a smartphone. That is FaceTime. That is a WhatsApp call from your cousin in Australia at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.

He was off by about five years on the timeline — the iPhone launched in 2007, not 2000 — but given that he was writing from an era of horse-drawn carriages and candlelight, we're going to go ahead and call that a rounding error.

The Verdict on Watkins

Here's the thing about John Elfreth Watkins Jr. that the history books mostly gloss over: he wasn't a crank. He was an engineer who worked for the Smithsonian Institution. He thought carefully, gathered expert opinions, and made his best assessment of where human ingenuity was headed.

He got the small stuff wrong — the strawberries, the alphabet, the mosquitoes, the mandatory ten-mile hikes. He got the big stuff breathtakingly right.

Which, if you think about it, is a better batting average than most modern tech pundits manage. There are people who confidently predicted in 2007 that the iPhone would fail. There are analysts who wrote in 2004 that social media was a fad. There are venture capitalists who passed on Google.

Watkins, working with nothing but his brain and a deadline from Ladies' Home Journal, looked a hundred years into the future and saw wireless global communication.

He just also thought we'd be eating apple-sized strawberries while doing it. And honestly? That part still sounds pretty great.