For amusement, my friends, The End of the Book by Octave Uzanne, from Scribner’s Magazine Illustrated 1894.
The End of Books
It was in London, about two years ago, that the question of “the end of books” and their transformation into something quite different was agitated in a group of book-lovers, artists, men of science and of learning, on a memorable evening, never to be forgotten by anyone then present.
We had met that evening, which happened to be one of the scientific Fridays of the Royal Society, at a lecture given by Sir William Thomson, the eminent English physicist, professor in the University of Glasgow, universally known for the part he took in the laying of the first transatlantic cable.
On this Friday evening Sir William had announced to his brilliant audience of savants and men of the world that the end of the terrestrial globe and of the human race was mathematically certain to occur in precisely ten million years.
The rest is here.