In this activity, you will examine some predictions from the past. You will read documents and look at images that predicted the future at different times in the past and decide whether those predictions did or did not come true. Then, you will write
short essays that analyze the sources and explain their conclusions.
Part A
Read these excerpts from three primary sources:
Source 1
This view of the future comes from John Wilkins (1614–1672), an English clergyman, naturalist, and writer, who helped
found the Royal Society for Natural Knowledge in England:
Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such
a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry diverse
men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of
anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship
swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat.
Source: John Wilkins from A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet, book 1,1640
Source 2
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian American inventor, scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur who worked with
electricity and contributed to the development of alternating current. He made these predictions about the future:
It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear
instantly in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the
world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument not bigger than a watch, which will enable its
bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles. One may listen or transmit speech or
song to the uttermost part of the world. In the same way any kind of picture, drawing, or print can be transferred