10 of the World's Most Groundbreaking Futurists
In 1900 , Smithsonian Institution curator John Elfreth Watkins wrote an clause for The Ladies ' Home Journal , entitled " What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years , " filled with predictions that many of his readers probably scoffed at as ridiculously improbable . Indeed , Watkins was pretty far off about some thing . He predict , for example , that the letters ' degree centigrade , ' ' XTC ' and ' Q ' would vanish from the rudiment , street would be relocated underground , and farms would grow strawberry as large as orchard apple tree ....