Ladies home Journal of 1900 foresees 2000: Black roses, TV, bullet trains
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Taking a break from disaster... Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900 at The Yorktown Historical Society. "There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet." Huh? They did foresee TV: "Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span." "Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour." "Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities." Because of automobiles, "The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today." Big flowers and vegetables interested them: "Strawberries as Large as Apples...Peas as Large as Beets." Why? They didn't do too badly, except that they thought flies and mosquitoes would have been exterminated, and "Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce." They didn't foresee salad bars. 
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The idea that we would rationalize English spelling was pretty common at the turn of the century. It would clearly be more efficient, and efficiency was in vogue at the time. George Bernard Shaw was into the idea, and it was actively discussed up into the '50's. Esperanto is a similar idea, which Wikipedia tells me arrived in 1887.
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