Predicting yesterday's future

There's something endearing about predictions for the year 2000 written in 1900 - if you haven't seen them yet, do. Of particular note and relevance:

"#18 Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn".  

"#19 Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box."

And my favourite:

"#9 Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there is a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later". (Spot on really, apart from the newspaper part and the idea that a delay of as much as an hour might be involved).