Monday, January 23, 2012

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John Elfreth Watkins Jr (1852-1903) was a civil engineer. In 1900 he was demanded to predict 29 issues for the 2000 year. Some of them had come came to be true but most of them hadn't didn't. In accordance of to the blog "Next Big Future" review the utter right ones prophecies were:
Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today. 
Prediction #10:  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. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move. 
Prediction #18Telephones Around the World. 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. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”. 
Prediction #19: Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theaters or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devises will add to the emotional effect of music. 

To see all Watkin's prophecies go to yorktownhistory.org

Last week the BBC News launched the same challenge for to their readers. Will they be right or wrong? We should live till 2112 to see!

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Sunday of deep rest after one nice Saturday night with my beloved Priscila! Not really at all because late that afternoon I got out for a long walk around the PUC university and after that I read some articles.

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Saturday I went to Verde Mar to buy some fresh fruits for my diet. There I ate Japanese food and drank a lot of orange juice OJ. In that night I and Priscila cooked pasta and drank two bottles of good South American wine. Not too bad!

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Another tough Friday at work. Just that.

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