To show how rapidly some predictions are fulfilled, I recall a conversation I heard the other day. A woman reporter and a man who had been a pilot in the World War were discussing modern air transport. The ex-flyer had just alighted from a big airliner and was describing how tea had been served.
“A table cloth, and cups and spoons,” I heard him say. “If anyone had told me in 1918 that people would ever sit calmly in airplanes and drink tea, I would have laughed my head off.”
His companion was amused.
“How do you suppose air travel will improve in the next ten years?”, she asked.
“Oh, mostly through refinements of what we have now, I think”, he answered. “It will probably be as commonplace to use planes then as to ride on trains now. No one will get any kick out of flying—except old timers who remember.”
“Your prophecies are not exciting enough”, the reporter said. “Can’t you do better?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, just this. Maybe the airplane of the future will look very much like the ones we have today. Maybe just by gradually improved design and improved motors and improved what not, it will reach its ultimate perfection. A good many of aviation’s leaders think so, I know. But isn’t there always the chance that some obscure investigator will stumble on an entirely new principle, and by applying it, make obsolete in a day what we think
