Time capsule's exhumation reveals scientific predictions on and off target

By Brian Fitzgerald

A cure for the common cold. Highways without exhaust fumes. Pocket-sized vision phones. Space travel. These are the 1957 predictions of several Boston-area scientists -- including a BU biology professor -- for the year 2000. WBZ-TV 4 recently dug up a time capsule that was buried outside the station 43 years ago, revealing a multitude of prophecies. Some of them actually have come true.

"Man reaching the moon," which became a real possibility as rocket technology progressed, was accomplished more than three decades ago. Other feats, such as a world without war, still elude mankind. Actually, a nonviolent human race was an aspiration rather than an expectation for the late George Fulton, who then was chairman of Boston University's department of biology. By 2000 "we will surely have made significant progress in human relations and world government to assure lasting peace on earth, and that is my fervent hope," he wrote.

The time capsule, initiated by Jonathan Karas, host and producer of the WBZ science series 2000 A.D., was marked by a plaque on the station's front lawn on Soldiers Field Road. Despite being encased in cement, over the years water had seeped into the two-foot-long metal cylinder, dampening much of the contents. "We dried everything out and all the paperwork was readable," says WBZ spokesperson Michelle Walsh. "Along with the predictions, we also found some everyday objects that they might have thought would be obsolete: a paper clip, a light bulb, a safety pin, a pencil sharpener, coins, batteries, and a mousetrap." A month into the new millennium and a better paper clip or mousetrap have yet to be built.

George Fulton was chairman of the CAS biology department in 1957, when he contributed millennial predictions to a WBZ-TV 4 time capsule. BU Photo Services

"Although in all probability I will not be here at the opening," Karas wrote, "I thought it would be interesting to speculate on the type of world in which you now live. Therefore, I am setting down my guesses at what you will have. Only you will know how close my predictions are." Karas missed the unearthing of the capsule by only a few months -- he died last fall. Some of his prognostications are on the mark: a manned space satellite circling the earth and vehicles traveling "over the surface of the earth at 200 m.p.h." (At least some can.) As for people "easily traveling six feet off the ground with hand-held propulsion devices," jet packs are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Remember the "Rocketman" taking off during the opening of the 1984 Olympics?

Vascular Advances

Fulton, who taught in the CAS biology department for 30 years, specialized in the study of blood cells. "I think that highly effective preventative and remedial measures will exist for the control of peripheral vascular diseases," he wrote of the year 2000. Fulton died in 1998, at age 84, but in his last four decades he witnessed great advancement in the prevention and treatment of vascular diseases -- most notably, the angioplasty procedure.

In 1977, a young Swiss doctor named Andreas Gruentzig inserted a catheter into a patient's coronary artery and inflated a small balloon, dilating the artery and restoring blood flow to the heart. Today, more than a million coronary angioplasties are performed every year. In addition, thrombolytic drugs have been developed to dissolve clots and restore blood flow. They also help many patients survive heart attacks when administered in time.

Fulton, who helped establish the BU Marine Program and co-founded the Microvascular Research Journal, also recommended putting an aspirin tablet in the time capsule "as a reminder to the new era of the headaches of the old." Ironically, aspirin has also been used during the past two decades in the secondary prevention of vascular disease.

"My father was the first person to film red blood cells," says George Fulton, Jr. "He provided footage for the educational movie Hemo the Magnificent." Directed by Frank Capra, the 1956 film has been shown in countless junior high school classrooms. Incredibly, one of the animated characters puffs on a cigarette with impunity. Of course, smoking is now known to aggravate peripheral vascular disease.

As for Fulton's hopes for world peace by the new millennium, the term may be relative. The wish was made when the threat of nuclear war was beginning to heat up. Two months later, Sputnik was launched, sparking fears that Russian rocket technology would doom the United States. Then the 1960s began with the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis. Another contributor to the time capsule, Dr. Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, Inc., hoped "that the time capsule will not be reduced to radioactive fragments and that people will be around to open it."

Fortunately, in the 43-year interlude, the planet remained in one piece, and so did the time capsule.

80-year-old narrative paints a strange picture of today's Boston

It wasn't in a time capsule, but a desk drawer protected it adequately for eight decades. The document didn't contain bold predictions. It was just fiction -- a brief piece entitled "Boston in the Year 2000."

Still, the short story by the late John Copeland (SMG'22) does reveal some amusing guesses about what life might be like in the new millennium. The story, written in the first person, is about an explorer who freezes to death at the North Pole, only to awaken on an ice floe that somehow has made its way to the Charles River.

"Flying through the air were countless submarine-shaped carriages" that lacked wheels and propellers, wrote Copeland. "Wool had become so scarce that a reward had been offered for a substitute cloth." Clothes were "made of paper-like material that had been coated with something that seemed to resemble glass, but was flexible. This glasserized paper was a result of many years of experimenting."

After graduating from BU, Copeland became a sales manager for the Atwell Company, which made Ediphones -- an apparatus that recorded and reproduced dictation on wax cylinders for transcription. He died in 1942.

"The story is interesting," says Gene Bradshaw, Copeland's daughter. "A lot of people thought that we'd eventually colonize the moon, and sure enough, he wrote that there were daily trips to the moon and Mars." The story told too of a plan "to take water to the moon to fertilize it and make it a place for the surplus population of the Earth, which is fast getting crowded."

Copeland wrote that haircuts "had become prohibitive in price, so everyone let their hair grow." Beards would also remain uncut. "He died before many people started wearing their hair long in the 1960s," says Bradshaw.

Copeland also postulated that subway cars would be replaced with wheel-less tubes "that traveled with enormous speed." Unfortunately, we still have the sluggish Green Line.