This Week in Amherst History

Leading a recent “rash of predictions” was Edward Bellamy (whom the article entitles “the missing link”) who, in a “mesmeric trance,” foresaw a phenomenon of radio knobs and dials, as well as programs that would “consist largely of good music.” Along similar cultural lines, writer Vincent Sheehan predicted a “triple-tier, 200-m.p.h. highway” and an international language.

Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton theorized anatomical changes among humans, including deformed dental arches, horse faces, big feet for men, small busts for women and no buttocks.

Other predictions included novelist Philip Wylie’s idea that people would “resort to pills for relaxing, eating, dreaming, and non-hangover tippling,” and James Thurber’s forecast that, “There will be no men.”