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Edison underestimated man's love for the beauty and warmth of wood furniture.

Thomas Edison: "gold wont last much longer" oh like the elimination of the gold standard and the rise of fiat currency? that's actually pretty spot on Thomas Edison: "in the future we will be able to manufacture gold" O- Oh yeah, that's technically possible

“Radium is a wonderful metal” “We know absolutely nothing about it”

Wow Edison fully just predicted the climax of the Bee Movie what an absolute legend

It's always fascinating to read about old time futurism and see, in hindsight, both how close and how far off the mark they were in predicting our current times.

Imagine the paper cut of the nickle sheet. Probably best to wear tough leather gloves while reading a book made of extremely thin nickle and bound with iron or steel...

So would such a book be called... nickleback? :>

"Mechanical Bumblebee" is my new favorite term for "helicopter"

13:57 “experiments in governments in the next 50 years, and not more than one great war...” - well, yes and no

still waiting on my flying bumblebee chair

“A recording of this article will be produced by some dude in his bedroom and beamed through outer space to everyone else’s bedrooms, where they’ll watch it on flat screens as thin as a painting. They’re in their bedrooms because they’re quarantined, since they STILL won’t know how to treat viruses.”

1:54 "every fact that we find makes it easier to find the next fact" -Quantum mechanics : Am I a joke to you?

Was not expecting "workers of the world unite" from Thomas Edison

why not replace wood with metal? well, the thing about metal is that it goes too cold and too hot very quickly. in summer you can't sit or eat anywhere without burning yourself and in winter you'll avoid touching your desks and chairs. also, electricity is inconvenient for a metal furnished house. metal books also suck, people cut themselves with paper, how could they not do it with hundreds of razor thin planks in their hands? seriously, I usually don't criticise these predictions because they had no way of knowing about the internet as an invention, but this is an exception, he already knows electricity is a thing, he touched metal in his life I guess so he must know how cold and hot it gets in a matter of seconds. how can he be so detached from the real world? he is arrogant saying there's nothing of value left by the people 100 years ago or more, like all that matters is the new stuff, but even people from hundreds and thousands of years ago knew metal is not good for furniture. is this guy really a genious? a wait, I forgot he stole invention of the light bulb invention. that explains why he doesn't know electricity and metal don't go well

Compared to other predictions from his time, Edison's is pretty far off. He seemed to misunderstand the nature the human condition a little more?

"Everything will be made cheaply by machines....and people will have great riches from the things they make" Ooook.

Edison the alchemist. Let's make gold!

What Edison couldn’t predict about 2011...was Skyrim and Todd Howard

Apparently Edison was not familiar with the laws of scaling. A bumblebee can fly with those little wings because it's small. Scale it up and it's not going to work so well.

Edison: "Civilization is not on the right basis. A few are getting too much and the rest, not enough. There will be some big experiments tried in government within the next 50 years..." Me: o.O

So... what is preventing us from having nickel books??

He was correct, all of England stops for a single command: "License!"

"I believed he was likely to know more" "Laughs in Tesla"

Thomas Edison- "So I'm hearing a lot about this cool new thing called alchemy..."

“There will be a government for the little man in the next fifty years” “A small amount of people are getting too much” - (paraphrased) Edison, 1911 25 years later: “Ein reich, ein volk, ein fuhrer”

Little did he know that plastic and other synthetic polymers would be the material of the future, not steel.

6 , and would you do European views of the American civil war ?

To Edison's credit, there is a lot of steel in our furniture that we don't usually see or think about, and it wasn't in furniture 100 years ago. Meanwhile he's on the right track that we're using steel and not masonry to make tall buildings and infrastructure.

"Only one more Great War" Close. There will be two. And it won't be the proliferation of armaments that stops it...well it is, but the nuclear kind, which I don't think was what you meant Tommy XD I love when people try to predict the future, and how inevitably wrong it always is. Makes it so that when they're right It's quite impressive. I may not like Edison, but a lot of his predictions were surprisingly close.

Nickel books was close at least, we got Nickelback.

Amazing to see such an influential person from the past dreaming of a strange future just like we dream of a strange future now, really puts a personality to someone who is just a "historical figure"

I wonder what he would think about how we think gold was made now. Gold is a very heavy metal, and usually, only way to make an element so heavy is through the heat an pressure of nuclear reactions. (Nuclear fusion to be specific) As it turns out, gold was not made on the earth. Much, if not all, of our heavy elements were created before the formation of the earth, the iron most likely came from another dead star that exploded, and even heavier ones most likely came from the intense pressure of a neutron star, the 2nd most dense things in the universe.

Questioner: "Edison what inventions does the future hold?" Edison: "Let me ask the private investigator I hired to follow Tesla."

Edison's predictions seem to be much more realistic than most others of that era.

Edison was pretty smart, he must have had some good predictions. Edison: Imagine thousands of bees lifting you up on a deck chair.

There seems to be two things these kind of visionaries underestimate about the future of mankind. The speed of the technological development and corporate greed.

4 or 5 suits of clothes a year!? I can't wait for the future.

1911: in the future, there will be electric trains 1960s: yeah, can't be bothered to put up catenary wires. diesel it is.

He overestimates how much the governments of the world care about their people. Other than that he’s for the most part spot on.

Honestly, I always though Edison was a thief. But that idea for bumblebee chair was so original he couldn't possibly have stolen it

So Edison predicted helicopters? And electric trains, with alternative fuels. Very progressive Seemed to hit the mark on modern farming. Also got mass production and lowering of consumer prices right too - I have bought significantly more than 5 suits of clothing in the past year, in addition to having multiple electronic devices used for work and entertainment, countless other modes of entertainment in addition, a cellphone, computers, a television, as well as all utilities of modern comfort: fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, microwave oven etc.

Hey some of these predictions have come true, others not so much, and hey for all we know some have yet to come true. Nice video.

Love your videos keep up the great work 👍

I predict that if I throw money at an overworked team of actual scientists and inventors that they will invent things that I can take credit for.

Ironically, the garments industry that Edison elaborated so much is the one industry that is still massively utilizing human labour. It turns out that a blind machine is not yet up to the task of holding cloths steady to sew them into garments in consistent dimensions.

I love these types of videos

09:05 - No brain, eh? - Oh there's a brain alright, it's just that the brain... is made out of _meat._ - What... does the thinking, then? - The _brain_ does the thinking. The _meat._

This dude never foresaw IKEA ... just another idea a rival didn't have for him to steal.

'Wonderful hearing the words of that old pincher. I suspect Mr. Edison was reading H.G. Wells "The War In The Air" (1908), in which what might be called the bumble bee flyer approach is taken, among others, and who knows whence Wells encountered or invented the notion? Not I. That bumble bee type also appears in one of those modern Japanese animations as the favored small pirate craft for raiding larger vessels. Perhaps someone will name the feature, which title escapes my memory.

What he is describing at the start is called "nuclear transmutation". We have already achieved the transmutation of lead to gold through radioactive elements (like radium as he described)

He was right about steel furniture. Most of the school, army and prison furniture is made of steel. He was right about factory production as well

12:03 Comrade Edison

Edison give me back my Tesla!!

He was somewhat right about poverty, in 2019 the global poverty rate dropped to 8.2%! This is amazing, since the global poverty rate in 1880 was 80%

To be entirely fair to Edison, he didn't do too bad Part 1: Gold to Radium: Right now we actually can create gold artificially by irradiating platinum or mercury. The process isn't anywhere approaching efficent or profitable enough to replace gold mines, so Edison's philospher stone is still out of reach. However, he was correct that it would be possible, he was incorrect that Radium would be part of it though. Part 2: The bumblebee flyer: Going to be extra generous and say "Drones"? Technically we do have drone "taxis" today and large swarms of drones are being programmed to do all kinds of things, which I suppose would be similar to a bumblebee. He's dead wrong on us needing to take a lot of cues from bees in order to fly "Very far, very fast, or very safely". The "inclined planes" thing could be talking about helicopters or VTOL aircraft used in the military like the V-22 Osprey. "bumblebee flyers will take is 100 miles an hour, or more" .... if it was that slow I'd just drive. Part 4. Something better than the telephone: Well he wasn't wrong that phones would get a lot better compared to his time. Part 5: Machine brains: the title sounds like AI, but what he's describing sounds closer to 3-D printing. Unfortunately the garment industry hasn't really changed all that much. Most clothing today is made by extremely poor workers in developing countries such as Haiti, bangladesh, or china paid in what's essentially slave wages... Part 7: International conflicts This one turned out to be so wrong it deserved a shout out considering this was made in 1911, about 3 years before the start of WW1. Also, I didn't know Edison was a Marxist advocating global revolution, the more ya know. extra!: "There will be no poverty in the world 100 years from now" Poverty is subjective to every age, and thus will exist in every age, most of the poor in the developed world live better than the kings and emperors of Europe 200 years ago. That being said, poverty globally, even compared to poverty in the 1911 west, exists in vast nummbers. As someone who deals partially in sales, NEVER say "cheap", the word you're looking for is "inexpensive". ------------------------------------------- All in all, it's no crazier than a lot of views from the future back then, he didn't do THAT bad considering he's trying to predict things 100 years into the future. I'd give him 2.5 out of 7 (considering most of his answers were partially right if taken generously)

Sometimes i wish scientific theory had more holes in it like it did back when Edison said these things, as that leaves room for fascinating new discoveries to fill those holes.

Well gold can be made now, but at what prize

"Only the people can provide the governmental means for keeping the riches they make. He believes that people are going to provide these means. He believes there are stormy days ahead for the man who would take what another makes." "He believes that the working man [...] will compel governments to serve him and destroy any government that will not serve him." "Civilization, he says, is not on the right basis : a few are getting too much, and the rest not enough." Well spoken comrade Edison ! Sadly we have not advanced a lot in this direction since 1911. Let's hope the peoples of the earth can find the strength to bring about such changes in the future !

It seems like every respected genius ever falls down the alchemy trap and nobody ever pulls it off. (Science was set back significantly when Issac Newton gave up developing physics and spent as much time or more trying to convert metals into gold)

Best prediction- “In US they will give me the credit for Nikola Tesla’s work”

"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly." - Thomas Edison

"Steel furniture will be more common" Me sitting on my computer chair with metal (It's probably actually aluminum) bars and platforms, hidden by padding and plastics: "That's ridiculous!"

Even though he was a hack, and strangely an elephant killer, he was brilliant. It’d be interesting to hear his take on the current state of affairs. Also, add Patton, Tesla, George Carlin, and Kinnison. That would be a good start.

Keep it up, love these videos

Just because you can turn lead into gold, doesn't mean it's going to be cheap enough to be worth it. Edison should've known that you could theoretically extract gold from the ocean, but it isn't worth it. So while he couldn't be expected to know radium, he should've considered "is it worth it" not just "can it be done" for alchemy.

If anyone is curious, the "bumblebee flyers" Edison describes were invented and are autogyros, ie a plane with a rotor for vertical takeoff and fixed wings and regular propellers for thrust. They were invented in the 20s, but unlike Edison's prediction they didn't really work so well and never really took off (pun intended) as a better form of air transport. Which just goes to show that some far fetched ideas can be feasible...but also not be the Next Big Thing

It's so hilarious that he built up what we could achieve, the secrets of the universe we could unlock, just to cap it off with "GOOOOOOOOLD!"

I think Eddison and so many others got the progress of society backwards. Among subsistence farmers the options are effectively to either work from dawn till dusk or starve to death. As societies advance people have the option for a work-life balance either focusing on their careers and neglecting less tangible things or focusing on relationships or focusing on spiritual enlightenment. The end result is that people who saw career and success as the goal will have far more wealth than those who saw it is merely a necessity and we're happy to sacrifice it for the sake of family or other considerations. It seems very possible that in the future people will be able to get by working only a couple hours a week while at the same time those who are married to their work will be able to spend their rare vacations in outer space.

Im amazed at how he is both right AND wrong simultaneously all the time

Human labor is slow and machine labor is not only cheaper and faster but also will be more precise and uniform. Damn sounds like a mechanicus adept or something but he didn't mention anything about the weakness of flesh.

I really love his optimism

Hahahaha. Even he was looking for the philosophers stone.

Edison had a brilliant mind. Great video!

Interesting to see the thoughts of this great innovator, and how many of these ideas either came to fruition or were pretty close.

I want more of this.

It's kind of funny how the gold thing ended up--can't we turn cheaper metals into gold now, but the process is just more expensive than getting 'real' gold?

Favorite Edison quote: When a reporter said to him, “It must be disappointing to have failed at your 100th attempt to create the light bulb.” To which he replied: “On the contrary; I now know 100 ways it DOESN’T work.” Where would we be without Edison????

My man was like "yeah, we'll finally discover the secrets of alchemy" over here

Bumblebee flyers; for the greatest inventor of his time, he had some strange ideas but also some very astute ones. I know that he advocated direct current to transfer electrical power and even conducted public demonstrations in which he had poor hapless elephants electrocuted by the alternating current which was advocated by his former assistant Tesla.

So he predicted bumblebee movie :-D

"Hold on, let me talk to Tesla"

3:25 That's not a bumblebee, that's just a bee.

He was quite prescient about almost everything (even poverty, which has plummeted all over the world). And note what his comments on clothes imply about how expensive they were in 1911.

I like how he tried to disspell his horrible legacy as thief of ideas and grand capitalist.

Edison's comments show that he had a poor technical ability. He was just a smart business man. Tesla was the true genius of the time

Creating Gold 1) Create a neutron star 2) Repeat '1' 3) Crash the two neutron stars together 4) Survive

Hmm... Edison must have had some kind of business deal going on with Andrew Carnegie promoting all of that steel...

When you want to ruin your rival's reputation by killing an elephant with his invention

Didn't expect him to be so much into socialism.

Thomas: gold will be useless Me: nice Thomas we will have flying bubble bees Me: ok helicopters Thomas: furniture out of steal Me: wtf

Can't make gold yet, but we can now make diamonds from coal, and oil from things like turkey carcasses which is indistinguishable from crude oil. The oil takes about a month under heat and pressure.

On the future people will be surprised by my predictions

Well, I guess we can safely say now that Edison wasn't a time-traveller.

He was right about the fire hazards of building your house out of wood...

"...Machinery will make clothing so cheap that anyone can afford to have four or five suits of clothes a year." I have maybe 20 shirts and about 10 pairs of pants...

Comrade Edison

He underestimated greed.

13:12 isn't it so mind boggling to think that these two children we see playing with a jack in the box have both (god willingly) lived full lives, probably got married had kids of their own, and so on and so forth and are already dead? To think that they are forever immortalized in time, just like all of us are now thanks to technology. And in over a hundred years from now someone might be staring at a picture of me or you wondering what our lives were like in a world that seems almost alien to them. Quality 4:30 am pondering

Poor guy. He didn't get to consult with Tesla first so he could give accurate answers!