In the preface to the first volume of his ten-volume correspondence course, James Boniface Schriever — president of the American School of Art and Photography in Scranton, Pennsylvania — paused to reflect on how much had changed in a single generation. Writing in 1909, he looked back at the 1870s the way we might look back at the dawn of the personal computer:

Back in the 70's of the last century — not so many years ago, after all — photography was in its infancy and but little practiced by the general public. The few professionals who made it their regular business prepared most of their own materials, plates, papers, etc., and the results were frequently very uncertain, as they depended largely upon local conditions, and on the skill and knowledge of the operator.

Then he made a claim that, in 1909, must have sounded a little breathless:

Now, there is hardly a science, industry, or enterprise of any account undertaken that photography, in some form or other, does not enter into. It is invaluable as an aid to research, study, and to the diffusion of knowledge. It has extended its influence far beyond the limits of a popular science, into a world-embracing industry. It is an Art; it is a part of every science.

Schriever was running what we would now call a distance-learning startup — mail-order photography instruction for hobbyists and aspiring professionals scattered across a country too big for a physical school. His course promised to teach anyone, anywhere, a marketable skill. The Kodak Brownie was nine years old. Half-tone newspaper printing was maybe fifteen. And already, this small-town Pennsylvania instructor could see where it was all headed.

What's striking is how completely he was right. He specifically calls out photography's role in:

• Print media: "The magazine and book illustrations, the depicting of current events in the newspapers, the beautiful half-tones, photogravures and three color reproductions..."
• Art distribution: "...that have brought the world's master pieces of Art into our homes"
• Science: "It is a part of every science."

Every one of these predictions compounded beyond his imagination. X-ray imaging, electron microscopy, spy satellites, MRI, astronomical CCDs, the Hubble deep field, forensic science, computer vision, machine-learning training sets — none of them existed in 1909, and all of them are photography. The "world's master pieces of Art into our homes" now arrives via a device in your pocket that takes and transmits more photographs in a day than existed on Earth in Schriever's lifetime.

The forgotten piece here isn't the prediction itself. It's the reminder that we are, right now, having the exact same conversation about a different technology — and that a small-town instructor in Scranton could, in 1909, look at a chemistry-set hobby and correctly identify it as civilizational infrastructure. The people who saw it clearest weren't in the capitals. They were the ones teaching it.