Newspapers in 1924 made predictions about what life would be like in 2024.
Newspapers in 1924 made predictions about what life would be like in 2024.
Nowadays you’d expect to read about current events and the news of the day when picking up a newspaper.
But in the 1920s it was popular for newspapers to predict what life would be like in 100 years’ time.
Researcher Paul Fairie from the University of Calgary has delved into past newspapers to assemble a collection of predictions from 1924 and shared them online to highlight where they hit the nail on the head, and how some of their thoughts were miles off the mark.
Among some accurate predictions were some laughable theories that sure haven’t been implemented in the past 100 years.
So did some 1924 society’s visions of what 2024 would look like come true? Here’s how it played out.
1. Automobiles will travel on speedways through the centre of town
One newspaper predicted vehicles would be everpresent on built motorways through city centres, with multiple lanes and triple-decked roads.
“In the city of 2024, this authority predicts, there will be three-deck roads, speedways through the heart of town, skyscrapers with entrances for automobiles as high as 15 stories.”
While we might not quite have skyscrapers with entrances for vehicles, we do have parking buildings that go up multiple levels.
A newspaper from the US predicted motorways through the middle of cities.
2. Apartment buildings will be 100 storeys tall, farmland reduced
“In 2024, we’ll climb to a hundred stories in the air... Our city a hive, with a huge population, will swallow the farms of a fifth of the nation. Our slogan will be ‘more!’ in 2024.”
While relatively limited, there are a handful of 100-storey apartment buildings, including Dubai’s Marina 101, Princess Tower, and Australia’s Australia 108 in Melbourne.
Across the US, South Korea, India, Russia, the UAE, China, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Russia numerous apartment blocks are scaling more than 70 floors.
And they were right about farmland reduction. Nations across the world have been stripping back farmland and lifestyle homes to build new suburbs and cities, including here in New Zealand.
A newspaper clipping from 1924 predicted there would be 100-floor apartment buildings.
3. Family albums will be videos instead of photographs
The predictions of videos taking over from photographs came true even earlier than 2024.
We all remember our grandparents pulling out their video recorder to capture our childhood memories, fitted with running commentary from granddad describing what is going on.
And in the day of Instagram and Facebook, reels are the go-to way to capture short snippets of memories during our ever-busy lives.
“The new movement for masculine emancipation and male suffrage has not yet bourne much fruit in the domain of fashions.
“A few more daring spirits among the weaker sex have ventured to appear in public in knickerbockers, and last week a man carrying a banner inscribed: ‘Men, discard the corset’, was seen on Broadway. But as these radicals were promptly arrested, it is not to be supposed that their influence will be great.”
In 2024, corsets for men will become unfashionable for, the 1924 paper predicted. They were right.
5. Jazz music will be considered classical
“Jazz music is a powerful force for development of music in America, and in a hundred years will be accepted a classical,” one newspaper from 1924 wrote.
They weren’t wrong.
I wonder what the people of the 1920s would think of our music charts in 2024.
1. Beds will fling children out of bed in the morning
Parents of the 2020s would love for this to have been an invention. Sadly for them, it is not, and the alarm clock is still relied upon to wake their grumpy teenage kids up for school.
But in 1924, they really thought this could be the way of the future.
Titled ‘A century hence, school life in 2024 A.D.’ a newspaper from 1924 paints a picture of a child’s morning.
“Crash! My bed turns over automatically and I am deposited on the floor. It is eight o’clock and the switch, operating above fiendish substitute for an alarm clock, is operated from school so that, at the moment, I am in the same predicament as the rest of the 450 scholars.”
It was somewhat of a bold prediction. And while we’ve seen horses vanish from the streets as a mode of transport, horses are well and truly a part of our lives today.
The controversial racing industry sees horses bred to race, and farmers and families on lifestyle blocks still own horses today.
“Another scientist says that the horse is to be extinct, and he sets the date a century hence,” the 1924 paper reported.
“The extinction process may be at work, says the Washington Star, but whether the horse will go to the vanishing point in that time one does not know.
“If horses would decrease in the same ratio as in the last ten or twenty years, it might be easy to tell when the last horse would give up his stall to an automobile and pass on to that realm where good horses should go, and perhaps where old Pegasus still rears and canters through the clouds.”
We might still be waiting another 100 years, but it didn’t stop those from the 1920s having hope for our future. Here’s what they wrote.
“Already the world is making such rapid strides that it is hard for anyone to keep up with it. In a century people will be flying around and exploring space.
“Aeroplanes will travel at what is now thought of as an incredible speed, yet the people of that age will not think any more about it than we now think about the present speed records.
“In the days that are coming, people will think no more of going to some planet that is sailing gloriously around through space than we now think of a trip across the ocean.”
A century ago a newspaper predicted humans would be travelling to other planets in the same way we make a trans-Atlantic trip.
5. Movies will bring about world peace
In a prediction that sadly didn’t hit the mark, newspapers from 100 years ago predicted that movies would bring about world peace as people would establish a “brotherhood”.
Unfortunately, Hollywood has not achieved such hopeful heights.
“The most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish with be that of eliminating from the face of the civilised world all armed conflict.
“Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition.
“With the use of the universal language of motion pictures the true meaning of the brotherhood of men will have been established throughout the earth. All men are created equal.”
Instead, since the prediction was made, we’ve lived through WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, The Cold War, the war in Iraq, and multiple terror attacks around the world.
