You Will Think This a Dream (Futures of Yesteryear)

The American women’s magazine The Ladies’ Home Journal took an interest in the future as early as 1900, when it printed an article by the journalist John Watkins Jr, which was translated into French and published in Futuribles in 1999 no. 239-240 under the title “The next 100 years (1900-2000)”. Fifteen years later the same magazine published an article by the Chief Consulting Engineer of General Electric, Charles Steinmetz, who set out 18 ways that daily life is likely to be affected as a result of widespread access to electricity, which would be encouraged by a lasting reduction in its relative cost. Two years after that, Steinmetz had the opportunity to check with his fellow-countrymen whether it was true that being comfortable does not make soldiers less hardy when fighting. The version of Steinmetz’s text that we are using is the one reprinted by The Futurist in October 1974. It is followed by a translation of the comments by Joseph Martino that accompanied the reprint.