9 Seriously Bizarre "Future Predictions" From The 1900s

4. We'd Be Blasted By Water And Whispered To By Robots (Every Morning)

Something that is pretty clear from a lot of futurist predictions, is that the people of yesteryear spent a lot of time worrying about some pretty weird stuff.

In a 1906 edition of the New Zealand Star, readers were assured that, in the future, people wouldn't have to spend all that time tediously washing themselves, but would simply subject themselves to a daily blast from a power-washer so that they could get on with their busy and exciting lives. According to the article:

The bath of the next century will lave the body speedily with oxygenated water, delivered with a force that will render rubbing unnecessary, and beside it will stand the drying cupboard, lined with some quickly moving arrangement of soft brushes, and fed with highly desiccated air, from which, almost in a moment, the bather will emerge, dried, and with a skin gently stimulated and perhaps electrified...

Regardless of how unpleasant the prospect of being blasted with a jet of water with such force "that will render rubbing unnecessary", or emerging from the bathroom with "electrified skin", the article only gets more sinister as the bather of the future will then:

...pass down the lift to his breakfast, which he will eat to the accompaniment of the morning's news, read out for the benefit of the family, or whispered into his ears by a talking machine.

"Whispered into his ears by a talking machine"? Sci-fi writers have done a lot to make robots sinister over the years, but none has come close to the sheer menace of a whispery robot.