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Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947
Page 45
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Everyone seems to be predicting these days, but how accurately? THE FUTURE IS ANYBODY'S GUESS by T. J. Mead "Along the highways will run electric lines on which you will find not only passenger but express and freight trains. These lines will ply between the principal cities and tows of the country, they will gather up the products of the farm and dump them at the freight office of the great trunk lines. The familiar spectacle of the farmer driving to town with the product of the yearly harvest will be witnessed no longer. Instead, he will merely haul his products to the nearest highway and have them shipped by electricity to town. The electric car will bring his mail to his door daily." The above might have been from the pen of a bright high school boy of about the class of 1895. If that was your guess as you were reading it, you can give yourself credit for hitting the date pretty closely. But instead of a student, the forcaster was one of the outstandingly brilliant engineers of that period. A reporter named Carly Snyder was interviewing Mr. G. W. G. Ferris, whose famous " Ferris Wheel " was one of the wonders of the World's Columbian Exposition, more familiarly known as the "Chicago World's Fair of 1893". The interview took up several pages in the Review of Reviews, of September, 1893, one of the leading magazines of the English-speaking world. Mr. Ferris had completed and successfully operated an observation wheel 250 feet in diameter, capable of carrying the 2,100 people who could be crowded at one time into its 36 cars. The wheel was hung so that its lowest point was 18 feet above ground; so for his 50 cents the passenger was privileged to look down on the Fair Grounds from a height of 268 feet. This would be a very creditable piece of structural steel engineering even today, and of course in 1893 it was the marvel of the engineering profession as well as of the general public. Quoting further from Mr. Ferris, "Undoubtedly the greatest practical progress of the near future will be comprised within the expansion of the use of electricity and compressed air. Indeed I am persuaded that modern life will be absolutely revolutionized so far as its practical every-day work is concerned within the next ten years. And electricity largely will accomplish it........The condition which will determine the relative expansion of tows and cities in the next decade is the presence of waterpower.........Any city which possesses this advantage must take the lead over any city which does not." There was one of the world's foremost authorities giving a detailed forecast of the mechanical environment of the generation following 1893. It is a pity that he completely overlooked the internal combustion engine. Mr. Ferris' didn't live to see it, but he might have seen, within 30 years or less, interurban electric railway lines being torn up and sold for junk because [[?]]the[[?]] competition of the automobile, bus and truck made their future hopeless. Nobody on earth can tell today which of our contemporary science-fiction writers are accurately forecasting the future, and which ones are as far off the mark as was Mr. Ferris, 54 years ago. But we can read their stories and use our own imaginations and scientific training, and get a lot of good mental exercise and fun doing it. (45)
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Everyone seems to be predicting these days, but how accurately? THE FUTURE IS ANYBODY'S GUESS by T. J. Mead "Along the highways will run electric lines on which you will find not only passenger but express and freight trains. These lines will ply between the principal cities and tows of the country, they will gather up the products of the farm and dump them at the freight office of the great trunk lines. The familiar spectacle of the farmer driving to town with the product of the yearly harvest will be witnessed no longer. Instead, he will merely haul his products to the nearest highway and have them shipped by electricity to town. The electric car will bring his mail to his door daily." The above might have been from the pen of a bright high school boy of about the class of 1895. If that was your guess as you were reading it, you can give yourself credit for hitting the date pretty closely. But instead of a student, the forcaster was one of the outstandingly brilliant engineers of that period. A reporter named Carly Snyder was interviewing Mr. G. W. G. Ferris, whose famous " Ferris Wheel " was one of the wonders of the World's Columbian Exposition, more familiarly known as the "Chicago World's Fair of 1893". The interview took up several pages in the Review of Reviews, of September, 1893, one of the leading magazines of the English-speaking world. Mr. Ferris had completed and successfully operated an observation wheel 250 feet in diameter, capable of carrying the 2,100 people who could be crowded at one time into its 36 cars. The wheel was hung so that its lowest point was 18 feet above ground; so for his 50 cents the passenger was privileged to look down on the Fair Grounds from a height of 268 feet. This would be a very creditable piece of structural steel engineering even today, and of course in 1893 it was the marvel of the engineering profession as well as of the general public. Quoting further from Mr. Ferris, "Undoubtedly the greatest practical progress of the near future will be comprised within the expansion of the use of electricity and compressed air. Indeed I am persuaded that modern life will be absolutely revolutionized so far as its practical every-day work is concerned within the next ten years. And electricity largely will accomplish it........The condition which will determine the relative expansion of tows and cities in the next decade is the presence of waterpower.........Any city which possesses this advantage must take the lead over any city which does not." There was one of the world's foremost authorities giving a detailed forecast of the mechanical environment of the generation following 1893. It is a pity that he completely overlooked the internal combustion engine. Mr. Ferris' didn't live to see it, but he might have seen, within 30 years or less, interurban electric railway lines being torn up and sold for junk because [[?]]the[[?]] competition of the automobile, bus and truck made their future hopeless. Nobody on earth can tell today which of our contemporary science-fiction writers are accurately forecasting the future, and which ones are as far off the mark as was Mr. Ferris, 54 years ago. But we can read their stories and use our own imaginations and scientific training, and get a lot of good mental exercise and fun doing it. (45)
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