When Chattanooga Daily Times readers opened their morning paper on Aug. 23, 1923, there, above the fold, was a headline that must have grabbed their attention:
“Sees Workday Of Four Hours In The Future”
Were this newspaper to publish such a headline today, it certainly would grab readers’ attention.
The source of the prediction was Dr. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born American engineer and electrical expert who — in an apparently reprinted article from The New York Times — was looking ahead 100 years to 2023 and to a world he foresaw as being transformed by electricity.
Certainly in that general prediction he was right. For electrical power has brought light, heating and air conditioning, all manner of time-saving gadgets and even cars to all parts of the world today.