20 Freakishly Specific Predictions From History That Came True

12. 2001: A Space Odessey (1968) Predicts The Use Of iPads To Read The News (1968)

Arthur C Clarke wrote his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, the same year in which Stanley Kubrick directed a film of the same name - both of which depict humans encountering mysterious black monoliths and flying to Jupiter. The futuristic sci-fi story, set at the turn of the Millennium, features a scene where two astronauts are reading their newspapers while eating their food. Intriguingly though, their "newspapers" are actually "Newspad" which look remarkably like iPads. In his book, Clarke describes the devices as follows:

"When he had tired of official report, memoranda and minutes, he would plug his... Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one, he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers. "Each had its own two-digit reference. When he had punched that, a postage-sized rectangle would expand till it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he finished he could flash back to the completely page and select a new subject for detailed examination... one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites."

Sounds very much like the 21st Century...