A Century Later

'A Century Later' revisits the pages of Popular Science to see how yesterday’s bold predictions and groundbreaking discoveries have aged. A hundred years ago, our writers imagined the future of flight, medicine, space travel, and everyday life. Now, we return to those stories to find out what came true, what fizzled, and what we never saw coming.

Latest in A Century Later

A close-up, colorized photograph of a middle-aged man with a stern expression and a thick, reddish-brown beard. He is superimposed over a faded, beige background of densely printed, historical text, suggesting he is a figure related to the document's content, which appears to discuss Cattalo or Beefalo (a cow and buffalo hybrid), based on the filename.

The strange Wild West tale of the first cow-buffalo hybrid

By Bill Gourgey

A vintage photo collage featuring an oval cut-out image of seven people—three men and four women, who appear to be young college students—dressed in 1920s-era clothing. They are standing close together and looking at the camera. The background is a texture of yellowed, old newsprint with blurred text about a sleep experiment.

In 1925, seven students went 60 hours without sleep—for science

By Bill Gourgey

A vintage photo collage featuring a man in a shirt and tie, intensely focused while looking into the eyepiece of a microscope. The image is overlaid on yellowed old text, likely a magazine or newspaper clipping, with blurred headlines visible in the background.

How a hatter and railroad clerk kickstarted cancer research

By Bill Gourgey

A photo collage with a vintage illustration of a futuristic, brown and orange sailboat, with a large sail-like structure and a smokestack, positioned on a deep blue sea with white waves. In the background, there's a faint, light-tan newspaper clipping with the headline "A Sailing Ship" and a masthead for "POPULAR SCIENCE" from February 1925.

100 years ago, ‘ghost ship’ sails baffled Einstein—now they’re making a comeback

By Bill Gourgey

A vintage photo collage shows a man in a suit and glasses looking at a scientific apparatus, with old newspaper clippings in the background discussing "experiments" and "vegetable material" and the possibility of creating food.

100 years ago, scientists thought we’d be eating food made from air

By Bill Gourgey

bald man silouhetted on text

100 years ago, scientists predicted we’d live to 1,000 years old

By Bill Gourgey

text in the background, a man sitting at the first tv in foreground

100 years ago, the battle for television raged

By Bill Gourgey

an aerial train car set on top of text

A century ago, suspended monorails were serious mass-transit contenders

By Bill Gourgey

a cut out from old magazine on text background

Why we can’t squash the common cold, even after 100 years of studying it

By Bill Gourgey

a man in a diving tube on text

100 years of deep-sea filmmaking and ocean exploration

By Bill Gourgey