World
December 29, 2024 22:20
amsterdam - Professor Archibald Montgomery Low made several technological predictions about our present a hundred years ago, almost all of which have come true.
Professor Low was a true renaissance man. On one hand, he was a technologist who built, among other things, a precursor to television and laid the foundation for radio-controlled vehicles, earning him the title of the father of unmanned aircraft. On the other hand, he was a futurologist fascinated by potential technological advancements that the future could bring. Low published numerous newspaper articles on the subject and in 1925, he wrote the book The Future.
Critics dismissed the British professor's ideas at the time as 'reckless fantasy.' However, a retrospective analysis by the British website FindMyPast.com reveals that many of Low's predictions were surprisingly accurate. For example, in a 1925 article in the London Daily News, he described 'horrors' such as being awakened by a clock radio, a now outdated device that he foresaw before it existed. Users would be able to select their own 'ringtone' and choose the time they wanted to wake up.
Furthermore, in the same article, Low predicted that in the future everyone would communicate using 'personal radio.' While it remains unknown if he envisioned today's smartphones, they do bear resemblance to his forecast. He also anticipated a bright future for his 'own' invention, television, which he believed would display 'glimpses of news events' supported by a speaker. He predicted that this device would replace 'newspapers with pictures,' a prophecy that did not materialize.
Low also foresaw a future where 'the wind and tides will be harnessed in the service of man.' Windmills are now ubiquitous, and tidal energy is no longer a pipe dream. Some other accurate predictions by Low included determining a baby's gender before birth, women wearing trousers, and the automation of manufacturing processes, making life 'much easier, now that machines perform all the heavy and unpleasant work.'
However, Low was often wide of the mark. He predicted that herbs would play a significant role in street lighting and that cavalry would be replaced not by tanks but by beams of electrocuted water. He also believed that it would take centuries for 'women to approach the intelligence of men' and only if they 'adopted the physical characteristics of men.'
Despite these inaccuracies, a researcher from FindMyPast.com, Jen Baldwin, remarked that 'it's amazing how a visionary scientist a century ago could predict how technology, which was still in its infancy, would change the world in 2025.'