"Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume."

A fun post on John Boitnott’s blog recalls predictions for 2011 that Thomas Edison made 100 years ago. He was asked to prognosticate about the future on June 23, 1911 by the Miami Metropolis. Some hits, some misses, of course. (Thanks Reddit.) An excerpt:

“Already, Mr. Edison tells us, the steam engine is emitting its last gasps. A century hence it will be as remote as antiquity as the lumbering coach of Tudor days, which took a week to travel from Yorkshire to London. In the year 2011 such railway trains as survive will be driven at incredible speed by electricity (which will also be the motive force of all the world’s machinery), generated by ‘hydraulic’ wheels.

But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.”