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Paleofuture -- A blog that looks into the future that never was.

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Paleo-Future: French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

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Paleo-Future: French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

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Update: The Paleo-Future blog has moved. You can read and comment on this entry here .] Flying Firemen The National Library of France (Bn...

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The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years".

Mr. Watkins wrote: "These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed."

During the Year 2000, we included Mr. Watkins research in our feature articles. We invite you to comment on these predictions, whether they have been realized in some way or how they can never be accomplished! In any event, we know you'll enjoy these entries.

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance.If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances.Photographs will reproduce all of Nature's colors.

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. 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. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a "hello girl".

#19: Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theatres or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devises will add to the emotional effect of music.

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The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years". Mr. Watkins wrote: "These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America.

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The Same Science That Has Put Satellites into Outer Space is Working to Make Your Home Out of This World. Here's a Preview of What's on the Horizon

By Joan O'Sullivan, New York Mirror Magazine Home Editor

New York Mirror Magazine, May 25, 1958

IT MAY NOT BE PLAUSIBLE but anything's possible in the world of tomorrow. Your most extravagant daydreams will come true because the same science that rockets Sputniks into orbit is conjuring up a multitude of modern miracles that are strictly down to earth, designed to make everyday living easier.

The progress possible in the closing years of our century isn't nearly so remote as the moon-and man expects to reach that satellite, go on to other planets, within the next few decades.

The Atomic Age is coming home but to houses that will be far different from any we now know.

Some will be plastic and vinyl rubber. A model, made by U.S. Rubber, resembles an igloo. You'll buy them deflated, then hunt for a foundation over which to inflate them.

When a job transfer occurs, you'll be able to deflate the house, fold it into a neat parcel and move it to Pittsfield, Plattsburgh or Kalamazoo.

Other dwellings will be constructed of new lighter, stronger steel, now being researched at laboratories of such companies as Sharon Steel. It will revolutionize architecture, give houses new shapes-triangular, semi-spherical, globular.

You won't run down to the cellar or up to the attic. Both will be eliminated. New storage areas will be found in extra rooms, cheaply available because homes for the average-income family will be mass-produced prefabs. You'll be able to put up a house in a day, two at most, which is far less time than it now takes merely to find a vacant apartment in the rent-bracket you can afford.

Furnaces? They'll be outmoded. Solar heating units will keep the new homestead snug and comfy during the Winter. If the sunshine supply runs out, an auxiliary heat pump will go to work during the exceptional spells of snowy, rainy, cloudy weather. Come season, go season, solar heat and air conditioning will maintain an even indoor temperature of 72 degrees and 50 percent humidity. In Phoenix, Ariz., a completely solar-heated house has just been built, architectural proof of what's to come.

There will be no need for Pop to snow-shovel the driveway in the year 2000. There won't be one. The family car by then will have given way to a helicopter, which will land on a plastic roof (it will never leak!) automatically heated to shed snow as it falls.

Transportation, which will definitely include atom-powered boats and planes so rapid you'll be able to commute daily from Paris to a New York office, will likely produces a space-scooter, a sort of second family car. Mom will use it to scoot after groceries or deliver the kids to school. Pop might hop into it and take off for work.

Such transportation is a long way off but within the next few years will come a local travel change. Helicopter commuting will be as common as bus or train trips. New York Airways even now picks up a few commuters from Stamford and Westchester and delivers them to a heliport on the Hudson River at West 30th St. The company expect to enlarge up this service greatly with a fleet of two-motor 'copters that seat 15. By 1970 and probably even before that, there'll be numerous commuter runs daily. Intra-city service, such as New York to Philadelphia, will be scheduled soon, too.

Just a Hint of What's to Come

The interior of the modern house will be heavenly form a homemaker's viewpoint.

Much furniture will be built-in-the trend is already underway-a boon to apartment-dwellers for whom moving day will be reduced to packing a suitcase and a few odds-and-ends furnishings.

John Van Koert, well-known designer, sees quick color changes possible because walls will be replaced by sliding panels. Sick of one color backdrop? Pull out another.

There will be no special-purpose rooms, says Van Koert, as we know them. Instead, uniformity of decoration through the house will be thin. Bedrooms and dining rooms will be decorated to look like living rooms. When wall panels are pushed back, the entire house will be furnished suitably to make one huge living area, if such is required for large-scale entertaining.

Many current decorating problems will vanish.

You won't have to wonder about where to put the television, for example. Its working parts will be so small and so flat, says RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center, the TV will be installed in a picture frame and hung on a wall.

Lamp wires will be non-existent-and lamps may well be, too. Westinghouse has already developed a method of coating glass, metal and plastic with phosphor which produces light. In the future, it's expected that this process will be used for window shades, drapes, table tops, even ceilings and walls. They'll all light up, lamp style.

Housekeeping will be a breeze-literally. You'll wave a wand and dust will vanish. According to Westinghouse experts, the wand will be electrostatic. Like a magnet, it will draw dust from under beds, behind books and form all the remote crevices and corners where it hides out nowadays, stubbornly resisting the efforts of the homemaker's dust mop or vacuum.

A Brave Look Into the Crystal Ball

WHAT WILL MILADY wear in the years to come? It's a tough question to answer. Predicting fashion changes from one season to the next stumps most experts right now. Sack or chemise, trapeze-look or sputnik-influence, new clothes will be made from wonder fabrics now being researched in laboratories of such companies as E.I. du Pont and Chemstrand.

What will result from these studies is anyone's guess but here a few predictions:

1. Marvel elastic fibers that will produce doll-size dresses capable of stretching into sizes from 14 to 40.

2. Plastic frocks that will deflate for storage, inflate for wearing.

3. Spray-on waterproofing that will eliminate galoshes and rain gear.

4. Disposable wear-them-one-and-throw-them-away dresses made of specially treated paper.

5. Air-conditioned fabrics that will cool in Summer, insulate in Winter.

6. Shoes packaged with a special solution that will mold them to feet, insure perfect fit without fuss or bother.

7. One-piece undergarments designed to mold the body into Monroe shape sans ribbing or other uncomfortable features.

Whatever results, it's possible that, instead of cutting dresses, Seventh Avenue will be "pouring" test-tube mixtures into dress molds.

Even beauty is in for some revolutionary improvements, says Madame Helena Rubenstein, who has revolutionized the glamour field over the years. She believes that the creams and lotions we now spread hopefully on our faces will be concentrated in liquids, pills and capsules taken orally. Permanent waves will be speeded into a matter of minutes. A remedy will be found for the male ego's curse, baldness.

Food preparation even now gets closer and closer to the completely push-button era it will be a few years hence. Frigidaire, Whirlpool-RCA and other companies have designed kitchens that preview what's to come.

For a meal of the future, you'll press a selector dial that will move food from freezer to oven at a specified time and guarantee a perfectly cooked dinner at just the right hour.

There'll be an automatic service cart to take meals from oven to table, from table to cabinet. In the future dirty dishes won't go into sink or dishwasher but will be cleaned right on the storage racks.

Portability may even be extended to the kitchen itself. Westinghouse has designed a futuristic kitchen unit on wheels. You'll be able to push it about, plug it in any place there's an outlet.

Food itself won't change radically. We're not headed for an age of capsules and pills-and who wants it? You can't toast the bride properly with a champagne capsule and perish the thought of putting a candle on a birthday pill. Food will stay as people like it, the way it is.

Won't Have to Catch the Waiter's Eye

It's a lovely day, tomorrow. You'll dial Paris to reserve pate de foie gras for lunch at Maxim's-you'll actually be able to pick out the portion you want by teleview-phone. Then, you'll hop a plane and whiz to your luncheon rendezvous abroad. If you miss a must-see TV show, a see-hear tape will record and photograph it for play-back on your return. Of course, that push-button kitchen will have dinner ready and waiting.

It's going to be an era of togetherness. Time-saving devices will bring mother, dad and the kids together for longer period. There'll be no need for calm-you-down or pep-you-up pills, for "tension" will be an obsolete word.

If progress continues to jet ahead-and each coming year will turn fantasy predictions into fact-three-to-four week vacations and time to spare. What to so with it? Travel and hobbies are two answers that come to mind. As for us, there are a few books we've always wanted to read...

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It's a Wonderful World - Tomorrow! What 2000 Was Supposed To Look Like (in 1958)

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The Same Science That Has Put Satellites into Outer Space is Working to Make Your Home Out of This World. Here's a Preview of What's on the Horizon By Joan O'Sullivan, New York Mirror Magazine Home Editor New York Mirror Magazine, May 25, 1958 IT MAY NOT BE PLAUSIBLE but anything's possible in the world of tomorrow.

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These illustrations from a delightful piece called the "Future Dictates of Fashion" by W. Cade Gall and published in the January 1893 issue of The Strand magazine.

On the premise that a book from a hundred years in the future (published in 1993) called The Past Dictates of Fashion has been inexplicably found in a library, the article proceeds to divulge this book's contents - namely, a look back at the last century of fashion, which, of course, for the reader in 1893, would be looking forward across the next hundred years into the future.

In this imagined future, fashion has become a much respected science (studied in University from the 1950s onwards) and is seen to be "governed by immutable laws".

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1993

(via The Public Domain Review)

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Here's How People From 1893 Imagined What We Would Be Wearing From Every Decade Up To the 1990s

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These illustrations from a delightful piece called the "Future Dictates of Fashion" by W. Cade Gall and published in the January 1893 issue of The Strand magazine.

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Toasted bacon wrapped in tin trays, sonic dishwashers and fridges that appear from under the kitchen floor - this was how life was supposed to be 40 years ago.

These pictures are from a 1962 book called 1975: And the Changes to Come by Arnold B. Barach. They predict what the world of the future looked like from the early 60s - and many of them turned out to be surprisingly accurate, though they didn't necessarily come about by 1975.

1. Translating Machine.

Typist copies story from Russian newspaper Pravda on special machine which converts Russian letters to punched holes in paper tape. Insertion of the tape into another machine produces translation. By the 1970's, automatic translation of practically all foreign publications and books will be routine.

Every 60 seconds, day and night, approximately 2,000 pages of books, newspapers, or reports are published somewhere in the world; and the output is increasing by leaps and bounds. Libraries will ultimately be forced to use computers such as this for locating documents and references, since it will be so difficult otherwise to keep up with the printed material. This pioneering installation is at the Center for Documentation and Communication Research at Western Reserve University.

Printed pages or typewritten documents placed in this machine are recorded on punched paper at a speed of 240 characters a second. The punched paper then can be fed into another unit for reproduction of what the machine "read." A few offices are already being supplied with this type of machinery. By 1975, it will be standard office equipment.

Teaching machines break complicated subject matter into bit-by-bit segments, permitting each student to progress at his own pace. This machine, for example (called the "AutoTutor"), first presents a unit of information. Then come questions based on what the student has learned, together with alternate answers. If the student presses the right buttons for the answers, he is "rewarded" with a new unit of study which appears on the machine. If he flubs the answers, a paragraph of text appears on the screen setting him right, and then he tries again. On the right is a classroom demonstration of the machine -- a scene that will be commonplace in future years in most schools.

In this classroom, the lesson and questions-in spelling, history, geography, and other subjects-are on a series of stacked cards at the top of the device. The student answers the questions by pushing one of four buttons. If he pushes the right one, the page drops down, revealing the next step in the lesson. The machine also scores each student,. thus spots the slow learners for the teacher.

Student pushes one of four buttons to give answers and his score appears on paper slip at upper right. Teaching machines, expected to boom in the next decade, usually operate on the principle of repetition until the pupil understands. They aim to speed up the learning process and relieve teacher of much paper work in the classroom.

The dishwasher is ultrasonic. The freezer and refrigerator units (rear) are lowered and raised at the push of a button, disappearing behind the plastic paneling when not in use. The range is electronic. Special cabinets are included for storing atomicradiated foods. Most manufacturers of electrical equipment have designed similar kitchens for the seventies. This one is the brain child of Kelvinator.

High frequency sound waves energize the water to wash the dishes in this ultrasonic dishwasher. A device called a transducer produces the high frequency sound waves (about 20,000 cycles per minute), pitched so high they cannot be heard by the human ear. Ultrasonic washers are more effective than existing types; they scour without scratching, remove baked-on matter readily, and wash much faster than any type now in general use. The same principle of ultrasonic cleaning will be applied to washing machines within another decade.

Among tomorrow's "wife-savers" is this working model of a combination electronic oven and food freezer. Meals are prepared in advance and stored in the individual freezer compartments, each one labeled on the corresponding push buttons. At dinner time, the housewife pushes the appropriate buttons; and in less than half an hour, the full meal emerges at the rear end of the appliance, hot and ready to serve (lower picture).

Portable oven, by designer Greta Magnusson Grossman, is intended for broiling and baking at the table, on the patio, or in the kitchen. Round half-spheres can be moved in either direction to open or close the oven. Cooking would be by fast radiant heat. Devices such as this point the way to new informality in the home.

Bacon would be prefried, then hermetically sealed in this design for a future aluminum package. One way to heat it for eating would be to drop it in the toaster; another, put in oven or broiler. A major advantage is the elimination of utensils for cooking. Package is opened by turning back the edges. Leftovers are easily preserved by refolding the pouch.

12. Two Variations of Future Television Sets.

On the left, a triple-purpose unit for the housewife, enabling her to watch her children at play or identify visitors at the door or watch her favorite color television program. On the right, a salesman's video-audio tape player, housed in an attaché case, and designed to project visual sales presentations as well as to function as a dictation unit.

13. What's On Delhi-Television Tonight?

This is the ultimate in proposed television sets for a decade hence. It can receive television signals bounced from circling satellites, bringing programs from any city on the globe. The spot of origin of the program is indicated by a light on the world map in the upper panels. Round dials are clocks showing the hour in four major time zones. Dials at right are for tuning and sound control. The set is only three inches thick. On the reverse side it is equipped with an international stereophonic radio.

High-fidelity sets do not have to be square, and they do not have to be long. This look into tomorrow is an effort to blend the feeling of a musical instrument with modern electronics. Engineers have long maintained that a sphere is the ideal source of sound reproduction. Note these features: The cone speakers are retract-lc, can have a span of six feet between them, and can be pitched in any direction the best stereophonic effect. In the base of the sphere is a woofer speaker, facing inward. When not in use, the three-foot aluminum globe can be completely closed present a decorative sphere.

Lightweight steel arches are the secret of this low-cost house for a city lot of limited area. Note how arches span both living area and outdoor recreational area. Model with roof removed shows how living space would be arranged. By 1975, land to build on will be much scarcer than today in big-city areas, so architects experiment with new housing concepts such as this to make the most of what will be available.

Designers prepare for the future with new recreational concepts for the family. This beach house has multicolored aluminum roof and glass walls, offering complete access to the out-of-doors. Peaked roof is 15.5 feet above the floor, and walls radiate from central column like spokes on a wheel.

Heart victims' lives might be saved with these electronic devices, demonstrated by inventor Morris Tischler. The "Cardiac Pacer" is worn by heart patients and automatically emits electrical stimulants in the event the heart falters. The "Cardiac Monitor" keeps track of the heart rate, and, in the event of trouble, activates the Pacer, sets off a high-pitched alarm, and broadcasts a special signal to a receiver carried by the doctor. The signal broadcasts for a distance of two and a half miles. Unit is for bedside use, either at home or in a hospital, and is likely to be standard equipment of heart specialists in another few years.

Snack bar for future astronauts is well along in development. Spacemen will be able to eat almost anything, but it will take an expelling device such as this to force food from container to the diner; at zero gravity knives and forks are useless, since they-and any food on a plate-would float around the rocket ship's cabin. Expelling device screws onto punctured can and is operated by squeezing to force food through the nipple. Research is going on at the Aeromedical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Graphite in each of the 119 "cans" in this cylindrical tank controls the neutrons that produce atomic fission. Fuel elements are slid into the coiled springs. This is the core of an experimental sodium reactor which is expected to demonstrate a more economical way of producing electricity from atomic energy than is possible with existing reactor designs.

A rack of canned beans is lowered into a radioactive container where, in six to twenty minutes, the beans will receive enough radiation to preserve them indefinitely. Atomic radiation of foods will be routine in the seventies. Meats, vegetables, and fruits will be preserved by the process. Radiated foods can be kept for years with little or no refrigeration.

Atomic reactor is one of the "Kiwi" experimental designs, predecessor of atomic units that will be used to send rockets millions of miles through space.

(from 1975: And the Changes To Come by Arnold B. Barach, via Derrick Bostrom's Flickr)

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A Book Predict Wacky Gadgets Made 40 Years Ago and Show What the World of the Future Looked Like From the Early 1960s

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Toasted bacon wrapped in tin trays, sonic dishwashers and fridges that appear from under the kitchen floor - this was how life was supposed to be 40 years ago. These pictures are from a 1962 book called 1975: And the Changes to Come by Arnold B. Barach.

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In 1882 French illustrator Albert Robida (1848-1926) completed a wildly futuristic engraving: his vision of fashionable Parisian opera attendees, in the year 2000.

In tandem, Robida wrote a science fiction trilogy in the late nineteenth century, which drew comparison to author Jules Verne's renown works, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In Robida's novels he predicted many phenomena of the forthcoming modern world: mass tourism, pollution, guided missiles, chemical weapons and the emancipation of women.

Most striking was the Téléphonoscope, a flat screen television display delivering 24-hour news, programs, education and face-to-face communication.

Below we examine the details of "Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000."

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19th Century Artist Predicted Whale-Shaped Flying Cars by 2000

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In 1882 French illustrator Albert Robida (1848-1926) completed a wildly futuristic engraving: his vision of fashionable Parisian opera attendees, in the year 2000. In tandem, Robida wrote a science fiction trilogy in the late nineteenth century, which drew comparison to author Jules Verne's renown works, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

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Our visions of the future have always been more complex than hoverboards and self-lacing sneakers.

Sure, there were the various tropes from many bad sci-fi movies (and a few good ones), such as food in pill form, flying cars, personal jetpacks and robot butlers. But futurists also envisioned brave new worlds that have since been entirely forgotten - the death of the letters C, X and Q, for example, not to mention the use of discarded underwear to manufacture candy ( ew).

We doff our caps to Paleofuture for making these future-happy predictions from years hence so easily available. Below, we've resuscitated a few of our favorites, which have yet to come true.

1. Say goodbye to the letters C, X and Q (1900)

"These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible," begins a 1900 article in Ladies' Home Journal. "Yet they have come from the most conservative and learned minds in America."

These "learned minds" suggested that by the year 2000, certain letters of the alphabet would simply vanish: "There will be no C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will be second."

2. Flying bicycles mean empty cities (1909)

In 1909, Jules Bois, alternately referred to by The New York Times as a "mystic," a "litterateur" and a "Frenchman," rightly predicted that the era's ideal of feminine beauty would be overturned: "Physical weakness, extreme delicacy of physiognomy and acquiescence in a mere secondary position in the social organization will have given place to a type in which beauty and muscular development will be combined." (See: fitspo.)

He then went on to make a few less prescient claims, predicting that "a kind of flying bicycle will have been invented which will enable everybody to traverse the air at will, far above the earth. Hardly any one will remain in the cities at night. They will be places of business only. People of every class will reside in the country or in garden towns at considerable distances from the populous centers."

3. Everything will be coated in plastic, and food comes in frozen bricks (1950)

In an issue of Popular Mechanics, the incredibly-named Waldemar Kaempffert, then science editor of The New York Times, envisioned a future in which everything is either disposable or recyclable. To illustrate his point, he came up with a hypothetical family, the Dobsons, living in a hypothetical town called Tottenville (population 100,000).

"When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything," Kaempffert wrote. "Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors - all are made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber) Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything."

With the advent of frozen foods in the shape of bricks, he adds, "cooking as an art is only a memory in the minds of old-people. A few die-hards still broil a chicken or roast a leg of lamb, but the experts have developed ways of deep-freezing partially baked cuts of meat. Even soup and milk are delivered in the form of frozen bricks." Furthermore, Jane Dobson can serve a steak in less than three minutes, and an elaborate multi-course meal never takes more than half an hour to prepare.

Oh, and discarded linens and underwear are recycled and turned into candy.

4. 3D television, complete with "smellevision" (1950)

By the year 2000, "third-dimensional color television will be so commonplace and so simplified...that a small device will project pictures on the living room wall so realistic they will seem to be alive," according to an Associated Press article that ran in the Lumberton, N.C. Robesonian. Accurate enough, except for the part about incorporating smells into the TV-viewing experience: "The room will automatically be filled with the aroma of the flower garden being shown on the screen."

Another audio-visual forecast described the movie theaters of the future as dome-shaped arenas with screens covering the walls and ceilings. "These surfaces would be the 'screen.' Most action would still be in front of you, as now. But some could be overhead, some at the sides, and some even on the wall behind. A little girl steps into a street in the action before you - and you turn around and look behind you to see if an auto is coming."

5. Space travel for all (1952)

In a 1952 article from the Kentucky New Era, scientists at two separate conventions - the International Congress of Astronautics in London and the American Chemical Society in New York - cheerily predicted the end to most diseases, as well as overpopulation, by the year 2000. In their vision of the future, solar power is the dominant form of energy and "journey through space in rocket ships" is a common and economically viable form of transportation.

Dr. Werner von Braun testified that we would overcome most of the problems associated with space exploration by the end of the 1950s. "The first step toward true space navigation [will be] earth moons - man-made satellites high in the earth's atmosphere," the New Era paraphrased. "Persons stationed on these earth moons continuously circling around the world will be able to observe and report any unusual activity that threatens peace on earth. Supported against the earth's gravitational pull by the centrifugal force of its rapid motion, only moderate power will be needed to launch space ships from these satellites which possess no atmosphere."

6. Underground homes, with automated kitchens (1964)

In 1964, science fiction author Isaac Asimov imagined what the 2014 World's Fair would look like for The New York Times (there isn't one, so he's already wrong on that count). Most of his predictions were highly astute, which should come as no surprise from a man who lived and breathed visions of the future. But when he wasn't foreseeing cheap and effective birth control, "mock-turkey" and smart technology, he was wrongly predicting human colonies on the moon, hovercraft and underground cities.

"Men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better," he wrote. "By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button... Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common.

"Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be 'ordered' the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning," he continued.

7. Communal showers for hippie homes (1972)

Interior design experts in the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern predicted that the hippie trend - or what they called "long-haired culture" - would dictate housing needs by the year 2000. Communal dormitories, child-rearing facilities and kitchens would be the norm.

"One large room for meetings, recreation, group therapy and the like will be furnished sparsely, but it will at least be carpeted since 'space, materials and group interaction needs will make floor sitting important,'" one expert suggested.

"Bedrooms in the dormitory wings will be for individual couples because 'group sex is rare,'" the article adds. "But preferences will be for 'gang, rather than individual showers and lavatories.'"

8. Colonies on the moon, of course! (1982)

In 1982, The New York Times polled futurists, including noted proponent of the Singularity, Ray Kurzweil, to find out what the next 20 years would bring. Kurzweil's conservative predictions included electric automobiles and smaller families - "one child or none" - as well as more cooperative workplaces.

Independent futurist Barbara Hubbard had a more radical view of the year 2002: "There are the materials of a thousand earths on the moon and asteroids," she told the Times. "In 20 years, there is the possibility of a cosmic civilization." However, Hubbard cautioned that "the infantile species" - humans - must "take its mind off destruction and concentrate on construction" in order to realize this dream.

We must have failed.

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8 Bizarre Futurist Predictions That Never Came True

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Our visions of the future have always been more complex than hoverboards and self-lacing sneakers. Sure, there were the various tropes from many bad sci-fi movies (and a few good ones), such as food in pill form, flying cars, personal jetpacks and robot butlers.

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Magazine article featuring mobile phone predictions was penned in 1956

Phone mock-up resembles a pocket watch with a colour screen

Journalist wrote about features including: touchtone dialling, video calling, voice recognition and small colour screens capable of being used as TVs

Features, such as soothing ringtones, were foreseen by a US engineer

He also wrongly predicted that we could have a phone number for life

It may look like a stopwatch at first glance, but this conceptual 'phone of tomorrow' imagined in the 1950s, included many ideas that have now become a reality.

Future technology trends are notoriously hard to predict, but a magazine article penned in 1956 foresaw modern smartphone features.

The journalist, Robert Beason, wrote about features such as touchtone dialing, video calling, voice recognition and small colour screens capable of being used as tiny televisions, built into compact devices.

His interviewee, Harold Osborne, the retiring chief engineer of American Telephone & Telegraph also foresaw other common features of modern smartphones, such as quick call connections, lighted keypads and soothing ringtones, which were all included in the article published in US magazine, Mechanix Illustrated.

Despite looking like a pocket watch, the illustration in the magazine contains familiar features such as numbered buttons and photos of contacts.

However, Mr Osborne didn't get everything right. He forecast that every baby around the world would be given a telephone number at birth that would be kept for the entirety of their life.

The number would be a way of knowing whether that person is alive.

'If he does not see or hear from him, he will know his friend is dead,' the engineer concluded.

Mr Osbourne predicted that it would take years for portable phones to be created and that a large part of this work would be achieved at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

Mr Beason wrote: 'Men at Murray Hill are now working on phone equipment you may be using in two, five, ten or 20 years.

'The path of research is leading toward the videophone to enable you to see as well as hear your party.'

He believes that adding video equipment to Mr Osbourne's idea of a watch-sized telephone isn't far-fetched because the 'miniaturisation of electronic components already is far advanced,' with transistors 'as big as peas'.

Today, we are only just beginning to see the consumer roll-out of smart watches, which can be used to stream video content and images.

Mr Beason also reported that 'all electronic switching will complete your call a thousand times faster,' mentioning the advent of 'robot dialing' and transmission equipment capable of bringing 'live telecasts from England and the Continent'.

Other anticipations included voice recognition dialing: 'Some day you might pick up the receiver of your dial-less phone and simply speak the number wanted,' he wrote.

The author was also impressed by the notion of an affordable answer machine, which had 'been a dream for 50 years' and would inform a businessman of a message and relay a contact's number and name, negating the need for a secretary, or making her job a lot easier.

Similarly, he wrote: 'The speakerphone is just the ticket for an impatient magnate who dislikes being tied down.

'It looks like the usual phone except for a row of buttons and some holes in one corner where the microphone is located.

'A couple of feet away is the loudspeaker, about as big as a cigarette pack. The set allows you to have both hands free while carrying on a conversation.'

As well as noting that making devices smaller was 'a mania' in the industry, Mr Beason predicted that the future of solar batteries would be 'colossal'.

THE FUTURISTIC MOBILE DREAM PENNED IN 1956

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The 'phone of tomorrow' predicted in the 1950s

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Magazine article featuring mobile phone predictions was penned in 1956 Phone mock-up resembles a pocket watch with a colour screen Journalist wrote about features including: touchtone dialling, video calling, voice recognition and small colour screens capable of being used as TVs Features, such as soothing ringtones, were foreseen by a US engineer He also wrongly predicted that we could have a phone number for life It may look like a stopwatch at first glance, but this conceptual 'phone of tomorrow' imagined in the 1950s, included many ideas that have now become a reality.

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The thing about dealing with predicting the future is that, at some point, the future happens and then we get to look back at everyone who was laughably wrong. We asked our readers to go digging through the annals of time to see what some of the greatest minds from the past saw in the future, and gave $200 to the worst prediction ...

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26 Hilariously Inaccurate Predictions About the Future

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The thing about dealing with predicting the future is that, at some point, the future happens and then we get to look back at everyone who was laughably wrong. We asked our readers to go digging through the annals of time to see what some of the greatest minds from the past saw in the future, and gave $200 to the worst prediction ...

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Ridiculously Inaccurate Predictions About the Future

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In the February 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine, Robert Heinlein offered his verdict on the conclusion of the twentieth century. He would later revisit these predictions in the 1966 short story collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein and discuss the challenges of predicting the future. Here's what the author gathered, six decades ago:

So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future. Some will be wrong - but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.

1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door - C.O.D. It's yours when you pay for it.

2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between the sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.

3. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.

4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a "preventive war." We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend.

5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough" into new technologies which will make every house now standing as obsolete as privies.

6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.

7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called "modern art" will be discussed only by psychiatrists.

8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing "operational psychology" based on measurement and prediction.

9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish "regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him with an artificial limb.

10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be a-building.

11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision.

12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars.

13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speed.

14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity.

15. We will not achieve a "World State" in the predictable future. Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet.

16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining the semblance.

17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."

18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear.

19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "Civilization" be destroyed.

Here are things we won't get soon, if ever:

- Travel through time
- Travel faster than the speed of light
- "Radio" transmission of matter.
- Manlike robots with manlike reactions
- Laboratory creation of life
- Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.
- Scientific proof of personal survival after death.
- Nor a permanent end to war.

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Robert Heinlein's predictions for the Year 2000 (from 1952)

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In the February 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine, Robert Heinlein offered his verdict on the conclusion of the twentieth century. He would later revisit these predictions in the 1966 short story collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein and discuss the challenges of predicting the future.

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In 1964-exactly 50 years ago-sci-fi author Isaac Asimov wrote up his predictions about what life today would be like. He had a lot of hits and a lot of misses, as I wrote in my Scientific American column this month.

But Asimov wasn't the only person to look into the technological crystal ball. Fifty and 60 years ago gee-whiz films depicting life today were a staple-a sure way to wow audiences. Today these fanciful visions of the future live on, on YouTube. Let them be a warning to anyone today who's inclined to make a prediction about life in 2064.

Disney: This YouTube video from 1957 lets you relive Disney's "House of Tomorrow," brought to you by Monsanto. (Monsanto was then a plastics company, which explains the bizarre emphasis on plastic as the material of the future. "Is everything made of plastic?" asks the narrator. "Almost! Dishes, cups, countertops, walls, floors, ceiling, tabletops, shelves and cabinets. Plastics in all their colorful, functional and beautiful versatility!")

In the Disneyficated future you never unload your (ultrasonic) dishwasher; your dishes just stay there until you're ready to use them. Your thermostat controls let you dial up not just heat or cooling but even "the scent of roses or salty sea air!"

As it turns out, though, there's more technological progress predicted than social progress. The woman's place in that "futureland" is still by the (microwave) oven. "Imagine how wonderful it would be to live in a house like this!" says the housewife, putting on her apron. "Just imagine-I'd be getting dinner in this kitchen!"

The BBC: In this "Britain of the Future" video, depicting life in the year 2000, the tendency (as often happens) is to overstate the speed and reach of change. "We should assume a peaceful world, and plan on that basis," intones our anchorman. "We will be able to choose the sex of our children." (Well, right-we can, but few do.) And in that future we can even select offspring with superior mathematical abilities.

Give the sages credit, though: they correctly foresee improvements in software and in home-entertainment systems. "On the television itself," one gentlemen explains, "we can expect the screen to get bigger, but the set to get much slimmer-in fact, it's sometimes said now that it might be possible to make the television set so slim that it could be hung on the wall."

The GE Kitchen: This one, from 1956, is a subtle plug for Frigidaire appliances. Our hero, a housewife, dances and twirls through her futuristic kitchen as narration describes the magnificence of her life-in rhyme. "Tick-tock, tick-tock, I'm free to have fun around the clock!"-thanks to the automated oven that alerts her with a chime when the food is finished.

You'll note that her refrigerator is glass-doored so that she can see what's inside. That's not a bad idea, actually; might be nice to see it catch on in more current models.

Bell Systems: In this corporate video made for the 1964-65 World's Fair Bell Systems showed off systems it was then developing.

First, what we now know (or, rather, remember) as the pager. "Keeping in touch by means of the amazing new Bellboy is the Bell System's answer today for doctors, salesmen, delivery men or anyone who must be available at all times in the fast-paced world of Century 21!" the narrator says. "When you hear the signal on your Bellboy, you can go to a phone to call your office or home and get the message."

Bell also showed off touch-tone dialing, which it would introduce the following year.

Finally, there was the Automatic Dialer, which never did catch on. "Just listen for dial tone, insert a number card and press the start bar; the Bell System Automatic Dialer dials for you more quickly and easily than you can do it yourself." (And with Direct Distance Dialing, "Most calls go through in 20 seconds or less!")

Arthur C. Clarke: Isaac Asimov wasn't the only sci-fi writer making predictions in 1964. In this video author Arthur C. Clarke nails almost all of his predictions for the year 2014, including wireless communications: "We can be in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be... It will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London."

Clarke also insists that he's "perfectly serious" when he says that "we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand." He's right again. Robotic remote surgery is already becoming more common.

He whiffs on only one guess: that, thanks to wireless global communications, cities as business hubs will no longer be necessary. "Men will no longer commute; they will communicate.... They will travel only for pleasure," he says.

What he does best in this video, though, is to comment on the very nature of making high-tech predictions. "Trying to predict the future is a discouraging, hazardous occupation because the prophet invariably falls between two stools. If his predictions sound at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that within 20 or at most 50 years the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative.

"On the other hand, if by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far-fetched that everybody would laugh him to scorn."

We hear you, Arthur.

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What the 1960s Got Right-and Wrong-about Today's Tech

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In 1964-exactly 50 years ago-sci-fi author Isaac Asimov wrote up his predictions about what life today would be like. He had a lot of hits and a lot of misses, as I wrote in my Scientific American column this month . But Asimov wasn't the only person to look into the technological crystal ball.

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It's 2015. But sometimes it feels like our futuristic dreams are stuck in the 1950s and 60s. And there's actually a good reason for that.

The period between 1958 and 1963 might be described as a Golden Age of American Futurism, if not the Golden Age of American Futurism. Bookended by the founding of NASA in 1958 and the end of The Jetsons in 1963, these few years were filled with some of the wildest techno-utopian dreams that American futurists had to offer. It also happens to be the exact timespan for the greatest futuristic comic strip to ever grace the Sunday funnies: Closer Than We Think.

Jetpacks, meal pills, flying cars - they were all there, beautifully illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh, a commercial artist based in Detroit best known for his work in the auto industry. Radebaugh would help influence countless Baby Boomers and shape their expectations for the future. The influence of Closer Than We Think can still be felt today.

How many of these visions of the future are we still waiting on?

Cars have made tremendous strides in fuel efficiency over the past half century. But we're still waiting for this sunray sedan - a solar-powered car that was promised from no less an authority than a vice president at Chrysler.

People of the 1950s and 60s seemed to be obsessed with protecting their homes from the weather. Even if it meant literally living in a bubble, like this suburban utopia, which was protected from the elements by a giant, glass dome.

How does one begin to eat a cob of corn as big as a school bus? That question wasn't answered in this 1962 edition of the comic strip. But just think of the huge popcorn it would produce! (Yeah, I still have no idea how you'd eat it.)

If you've seen the inside of an Amazon warehouse recently, you know that the futuristic robot warehouse is kind of here. But sadly, they're not quite as cool looking as these robo-helpers from Closer Than We Think.

As the Baby Boomers started to go to school in the 1950s America's educators were faced with the crisis of overcrowding. One solution they envisioned for the computer-filled future? More automation, including push-button desks to keep betters tabs on kids.

These walking machines were meant to be a versatile solution for getting people out of cities during a potential crisis. This panel didn't describe what had happened, but it doesn't look good.

The future was supposed to be filled with cars and fly and hover. But the big question that this "flying carpet car" poses seems to be where the brakes would be. Seriously, how do you stop a hovering car like that?

The postal delivery worker of the future would get his very own jetpack! It's just too bad that he didn't see that whole electronic mail thing coming.

The idea for a highway to Russia isn't as crazy as it sounds. In fact, people were imagining it long before this 1959 edition of Closer Than We Think went to print.

Who needs to preserve life on Earth when we can just pack up and move to the next habitable planet? The August 16, 1959 edition of Closer Than We Think imagined that Space Mayflowers would take adventurous travelers to distant planets once we'd worn out Mother Earth.

Everybody is wondering if smartwatches and other wearables are the Next Big Thing™. That remains to be seen in the wake of Google Glass, but we can't say that we haven't been waiting for generations.

The police car of tomorrow would allow cops a height advantage so peculiar that one wonders if it's an advantage at all. Were they supposed to be able to climb out of that thing to give people tickets?

The videophone would be incredibly ubiquitous in the future of Closer Than We Think. So much so that applying for a job would be just a videophone call away, as we can see in this illustration showing a man in Philadelphia taking an interview with a potential employer in Buenos Aires.

The driverless car of tomorrow would let people relax and play cards. Or I guess that was the idea. Can you imagine this scenario in the year 2015? It's hard to believe that anyone would be making eye contact since their faces would be no doubt buried in their phones.

The media library of the future was going to be rich and varied. But there's something a bit off about this prediction from 1959. Maybe it's the film canisters lining the shelves. Or maybe it's the 3D-TV sans glasses that Pop is watching. Or maybe it's the fact that Mother is reading a book on the ceiling in what looks like the most uncomfortable way to read a book of all time.

People of midcentury seemed to have a particular obsession with controlling the weather in the future. Some of it had to do with war strategy. But it seems the bulk of it had to do with controlling the seemingly last thing that humankind had any control over.

A facsimile Christmas card bounced off the moon to be delivered from Boston to Honolulu? How futuristic! Except for that whole paper thing, I guess.

I'm still waiting on wall-to-wall TV sets. But more frustratingly, I'm still waiting on truly global TV. The internet has indeed opened up the world of media so that more people can enjoy TV shows from countries they don't live in. But the complex web of international licensing agreements makes legally watching some shows from overseas an overly complex chore.

The concepts for moving people from one place to another are decadently plush in Closer Than We Think. Even getting between airport terminals would be a pleasure. But we're still waiting on this particular version of tomorrow's airports to arrive.

This robot butler may not have the personality of Rosey, but it seems to get the job done. (If that job included watching you and your family while you sleep with its "All-Seeing TV Eyes.")

During the Cold War both the U.S. and Soviet Union were working on different drug-induced methods of subduing enemy populations. And frankly these "happy victims" and "psycho-gassed diplomats" don't look so upset. BRING ON THE HAPPY GAS, RUSKIES!

Do you ever wonder why Americans call it a restroom? Because we like to sit in there and rest. This combination bathroom-lounge was really going to take our resting to a new level.

The fully electric car is beginning to hit the mainstream. But it was a long time coming. This futuristic electric car runner was supposed to be perfect for quick jaunts to the farmer's market.

This desk was going to fix the Baby Boomers' school overcrowding problem for good - by keeping those rugrats at home, where they belong!

Whenever disaster hits in Radebaugh's world of Closer Than We Think, we never learn what destroyed the world. But given the masses of people fleeing a burned out shell of a city, this one can't be good.

The checkout robots now so common at major supermarket chains are a huge pain. But just imagine if you could swear at them and they'd understand you!

I used to live in Minnesota, so I know how obnoxious snow can be. But I also know that taking a flame-thrower to the road probably isn't a great idea. I guess the animals or people stuck under that snow would at least die a relatively painless (if fiery) death.

The authorities really seem to have an eye on things in this police dispatch center of the future. Serve, protect, and watch everything that moves.

The surgery of tomorrow would be painless and knife-less. At least that's what Closer Than We Think promised. Some versions of "bloodless surgery" have indeed come to pass. But chemotherapy isn't a walk in the park, as any cancer survivor can tell you.

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42 Visions For Tomorrow From The Golden Age of Futurism

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It's 2015. But sometimes it feels like our futuristic dreams are stuck in the 1950s and 60s. And there's actually a good reason for that. The period between 1958 and 1963 might be described as a Golden Age of American Futurism, if not the Golden Age of American Futurism.

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What people in 1900 thought life would be like in the technological paradise of 2000

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Well, they were right about the North Pole being warmer.

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Before it became known as the "idiot box," television was seen as the best hope for bringing enlightenment to the American people

smithsonian.com

Today most universities offer online courses that allow students to study and take tests without physically being on campus, but in the 1930s the distance learning technology of the future was television.

Both radio and television were initially envisioned as methods for point-to-point communication, but once radio broadcasting became mainstream in the 1920s universities saw the potential of the medium to reach a broad audience with educational programming. This was especially true in rural farming communities where long distance commuting to a university was out of the question.

Universities in the U.S. may have been at the forefront of experimenting with radio broadcasting, but frankly, they weren't great at attracting sizable audiences. As Douglas B. Craig explains in his book Fireside Politics, "many university stations began operations with high hopes of bringing education to the masses, but soon faltered as broadcasting costs increased, audiences diminished, and professors demonstrated that lecture-hall brilliance did not always translate into good radio technique. These problems were quickly reflected in an unfavorable allocation of frequency or broadcast times, sending many of these stations into a downward spiral to oblivion."

The handful of universities that were successful at attracting large audiences did so by introducing an almost confrontational approach to their presentation. University of Chicago Round Table, which began as a local Chicagoland broadcast in 1931 but ran nationally on NBC radio from 1933 until 1955, adopted a talk radio format that would be quite familiar to today's audiences. Rather than a single professor lecturing on a given topic, University of Chicago Round Table had three professors or scientists sitting around a triangular table while facing each other. These people would then debate scientific subjects like whether there was life on other planets and whether light is a wave or a particle. As Marcel C. Lafollette notes in " A Survey of Science Content in U.S. Radio Broadcasting, 1920s through 1940s, the goal of University of Chicago Round Table was to "keep it moving and keep it conversational" - a rule of broadcasting that holds true today.

Experiments in television brought universities that had failed at radio a fresh start, but it was still unclear as to whether these technologies should be used for narrowly targeted or broadcast purposes. In 1933, the University of Iowa became the first American university to broadcast TV. The first public demonstration of television in the state had occurred just two years earlier at the 1931 Iowa State Fair, and there was tremendous excitement by scientists at the University of Iowa to see what it could accomplish. Unreliable and unclear at the time, the rudimentary television technology of the early 1930s meant that the few experimenters who owned a TV (most likely constructed by themselves, rather than purchased in a store) had to turn on their radio in order to hear the broadcast, as the audio and visual couldn't be broadcast together. As noted in the March 16, 1933 Monticello Express (Monticello, IA):

University of Iowa's radio and television stations WSUI and W9XK are now ready to present the first scheduled series of sight and sound educational programs ever given by an American university. This announcement was made by the department of electrical engineering last Friday. The first broadcasts will probably be made once a week between 7 and 7:30 p.m., exact evening to be determined upon later. Details of the broadcasts are now being arranged and it is expected that a regular schedule of illustrated lectures will commence next week. Illustrated lectures have been chosen for program material because they are adaptable to radio and television synchronization pictures being confined to small areas with details.

In 1935, New York University professor C. C. Clark conducted a class using a shortwave radio transceiver (a radio that can both send and receive messages) from his home. Because the radio went both ways, Prof. Clark was able to take questions from the class. The April 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft magazine reported on Clark's experiment as a harbinger of the bold new way that classes may one day be conducted by television.

The article in Short Wave Craft included the drawing below, which proclaimed that it would be a scene "commonplace for tomorrow." Interestingly, the article also makes mention of the need for advertising to sustain such ventures - a controversial prospect at the dawn of television broadcasting.

The scene will be a commonplace one tomorrow, without a doubt, when television will be as indispensable to our every day home life as the radio program receiver is today. Television advertising will be a "brand-new art" which our advertising experts will have to develop and perfect in the future.

The article claims that practical television broadcasting is just a year or two away, but doesn't mention the experiments at the University of Iowa. The magazine goes on excitedly about the commercial opportunities of television even though the FCC wouldn't yet allow stations to sell advertising in 1935.

As the illustration shows we will undoubtedly have lectures of every conceivable kind present to us right in our homes, when practical television arrives, possibly a year or two off. Mathematics, geometry, and dozens of other subjects will be "apple pie" so far as broadcasting them through the air by radio is concerned, when television is available for the purpose, compared to the present situation when it is quite impractical to attempt giving lectures on geometry or other subjects, which really require diagrams or pictures to make them clear to the uninitiated. Tomorrow our whole radio broadcast background, so far as the listener is concerned, will be changed when television becomes a common everyday convenience. Not only will various subjects be taught or lectured upon and brought into our homes, but the latest styles in men's and women's clothes, furniture, etc., will be flashed on our home television screen, and dozens of other advertised products, travel tours, etc., as well.

It would be another four years before television's coming out party at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and even then, the television receiver wouldn't become a staple of American homes until well after World War II. In 1952, the FCC set aside 242 noncommercial channels to encourage educational programming. One year later, it became apparent that the funding required to produce such shows was sorely lacking. Still, Life magazine tried to keep the faith: "The hunger of our citizenry for culture and self-improvement has always been grossly underestimated; the number of Americans who would rather learn a little something than receive a sample tube of shaving cream is absolutely colossal."

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Predictions for Educational TV in the 1930s

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smithsonian.com Today most universities offer online courses that allow students to study and take tests without physically being on campus, but in the 1930s the distance learning technology of the future was television.

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Shutterstock

Does science fiction predict the future or does it merely inspire future discoveries?

That's the question these 15 books force readers to ask themselves as they read about computer hackers, bionic limbs, and iPads, all thought up by authors decades and sometimes centuries before the inventions were created.

Inspired by this infographic of seemingly precognitive sci-fi books , we've assembled a list of the books that predicted the future.

Keep scrolling to see.

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These 15 sci-fi books actually predicted the future

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Does science fiction predict the future or does it merely inspire future discoveries? That's the question these 15 books force readers to ask themselves as they read about computer hackers, bionic limbs, and iPads, all thought up by authors decades and sometimes centuries before the inventions were created.

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In the 1930s, This Age of Power and Wonder was a collection of scifi prophecies that could be found in the curiousest of places - cigarette boxes.
Companies of the early 20th century would often include collectible cards with their foodstuffs and tobacco smokes. The New York Public Library has an extensive collection of these cigarette cards available for viewing online, including many from a series by Max Cigarettes called This Age of Power and Wonder. This series from 1935-38 includes predictions of robot servants, spaceships, live television from exotic locations, and ubiquitous airports atop city high rises. Somewhat ironically for a cigarette manufacturer, card number six in this series of 250 predicted great advances in the treatment of cancer.

Wells Forecasts Space-Ships

Television of the Future

How London May Be Lighted

Aerodrome of the Future

The Paleo-Future blog was started by Matt Novak in January of 2007. Matt has since become an accidental expert on past visions of the future, and has amassed an enormous library of media related to the study of retro-futurism. Matt can be reached at matt@paleofuture.com or followed on Twitter.

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In the 1930s, cigarette packs predicted the future

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In the 1930s, This Age of Power and Wonder was a collection of scifi prophecies that could be found in the curiousest of places - cigarette boxes. Companies of the early 20th century would often include collectible cards with their foodstuffs and tobacco smokes.

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When Arthur C. Clarke died, science fiction - hell, science in generallost one of its greatest, most forward-looking masters. In his honor, PM's resident geek and sci-fi buff analyzes the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the future.

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When Arthur C. Clarke died, science fiction - hell, science in generallost one of its greatest, most forward-looking masters. In his honor, PM's resident geek and sci-fi buff analyzes the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the future.

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The world of 1976: A high-tech wonderland of self-driving cars and smart roads, where the dapper motorist can program his destination and let his glorious land yacht handle the driving. Or so General Motors predicted in this must-be-seen-to-be-believed 1956 promotional film that the company screened back then at its traveling auto show, Motorama.

If you can spare 9 minutes to watch this full clip, unearthed by Philip E. Ross at IEEE Spectrum, you won't be sorry. Yes, it's a corny six-decades-old movie that is hilariously wrong about how far along car tech would be by the mid-70s. But it's also full of ideas that are still prevalent in the way we think about cars and connectivity in 2015.

For example:

* They have a combination of Siri and OnStar, except that it's a man in a tower and talking to him requires the use of ham radio lingo, over. It's a totally '50s take on a personal assistant to help you in the car. Yet the helper man offers you multiple route options when you ask for directions, just like Google Maps does, and at the end even recommends a great hotel, like Siri is supposed to do. Plus he joins in with the vacationing family on the jaunty tune they sing at the video's end. Try getting that level of service out of Cortana.

* The movie's vision of self-driving cars involves an "electronic control strip"-basically, a line drawn down the highway that the car knows how to follow. Just "synchronize your speed and direction," like the man in the tower says, and the car can take over. Today, most of our plans for smart roads don't involve painting a line down the middle of the road. But autonomous cars do find their way in part by learning to interpret the lines already drawn on the road.

* The roads of would-be 1976 have a separate lane for the cars that are driving themselves, like an HOV or express lane, but for autonomy.

Still, I have a lot of questions. Are they really going to travel all the way from this cheaply painted desert of the American Southwest to Chicago? What happened to our future Firebirds outfitted with cigars, iceboxes, and fold-down tray tables? Is the 405 still clogged?

Anyway, see this masterpiece for yourself:

Source: IEEE Spectrum

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Fabulous 1956 Film Imagines the Smart Roads of 1976

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The world of 1976: A high-tech wonderland of self-driving cars and smart roads, where the dapper motorist can program his destination and let his glorious land yacht handle the driving. Or so General Motors predicted in this must-be-seen-to-be-believed 1956 promotional film that the company screened back then at its traveling auto show, Motorama.

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Epcot has always been the most curious of Disney World's parks: a place of slow (and some might say boring) rides that focused more on education than on adrenaline-boosting thrills. This is a park where utopian ideals (the park's name originally stood for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow") meet multicultural reverence, with a huge section of the park devoted to miniature recreations of various countries. Epcot has always been a place of shameless futurism, where, for the price of admission, visitors can spend the day exploring contrasting and often unrealistic visions of the world to come.

In an attempt to keep up with changing technology, these attractions are regularly closed and replaced with more modern fare. But the extinct rides of Epcot's past are all fondly remembered by the generations who grew up with them. We thought it'd be fun to look back at five of the park's past visions of the future. Here is how they held up.

Horizons
(1983 to 1999)
Horizons is all futurism, all the time. The animatronic-filled, slow-moving, dark ride first pays tribute to some of the past's more outlandish visions of the future, with sci-fi dioramas showing off robot butlers, tube-based mass transit and a healthy dose of neon lights. The ride then takes a turn for the serious, replacing cartoonish prognostication with faux-realistic visions. Surprisingly, some elements of this vision of the future have actually come to pass, at least in some form:

-A family is depicted engaging in television-based videoconferencing in their living room. To anybody who has Skype, this is simple and possible. But the glasses-free 3D that the videoconferencing is presented in is a little more difficult to pull off today, even with recent advances that have made home-based 3D TV cheap and easy to use.

-A man is seen playing a keyboard that is controlled by waving his hand over it. Could this futuristic theremin have been forecasting today's DIY laser harp trend?

-Robotic farming: A former desert is shown being farmed by large, fully automated robotic machines. Bot farming is still fairly new, with applications limited to a few specialized, custom-built machines, but it definitely exists.

-Underwater personal subs: Residents of an underwater mineral-mining city (it's never stated what minerals they are extracting) are shown venturing out into the their backyards using personal subs. We aren't living under the sea just yet, but personal submarines are here--if you have the cash.

World of Motion
(1982 to 1996)
World of Motion is primarily a trip into the past. This slow-moving ride gives visitors an in-depth lesson on the history of transportation: from foot power to jet planes. When the history lesson reaches the present day, visitors ride through a tunnel of swirling light while a narrator waxes: "Ideas are there to help us fulfill our age-old dream to be free. Free of mind, free of spirit, free to follow the distant star of our ancestors to a brighter tomorrow." The future vision shows a hologram of a curvaceous futuristic car, which visitors can see their ride car transform into when they pass by a trick holographic mirror.

This attraction does not give any hint to technologies that could win out for future transportation--there is no talk of electric, hydrogen or plant-powered vehicles. But for those keeping score, the futuristic car does bear a striking resemblance to Aptera's all-electric Typ-1 e.

Captain EO
(1986 to 1994)
While most of Epcot's future-filled attractions sought to fill visitors with wonder at the site of what could be just around the corner, this Francis Ford Coppola-directed 3D film (which was replaced at Epcot in 1994 by the Rick Moranis-starring Honey I Blew Up the Audience) played off the same sort of far-future space-trotting sci-fi that forms the basis for Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. In it, Michael Jackson and his "ragtag band" of alien Muppets travel through the galaxy delivering packages and completing missions for a vaguely defined leader. The real draw: a singing and dancing MJ using the power of music to battle a mutant alien queen (played by Anjelica Huston).

Predictably, Captain EO's liberal use of sci-fi technology makes it tough to nitpick due to the fact that none of it has yet seen the light of day. Some of Captain EO's not-yet-here prognostications: sentient humanoid androids, furry (and very cute) alien life, and the ability to use pop music to transform bad guys into scantily clad dancers.

Spaceship Earth
(1982 to present)
In Spaceship Earth, visitors ride through a massive geodesic dome while learning about the history of human communication. Unlike the other attractions in this list, this ride is still in operation. After all, its giant golfball exterior is the park's major landmark, and is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon--instead, as the ride becomes outdated, Epcot continues to update it to bring it up to the times. So, for our purposes, we're going to look at the future presented by its prior iteration, which was in operation from 1994 to 2007.

In this version of the ride, kids are seen videoconferencing with each other while watching TV on the same screen. Today, the combination of Hulu and Skype makes it free and easy for anybody with a laptop and an Internet connection to pull off this trick.

The more out-there tech shown in this attraction is the instant audio translation. Two kids are depicted speaking over the tubes, with each hearing the other's speech in his own language. A primitive version of this technology can be found today in various forms--in voice-to-text-to translation, but the Department of Defense continues to research better, more instant translation tech. DARPA's Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program aims to develop software that can interpret speech and text in multiple languages on the spot. But while progress has been made, the ease with which this Epcot-envisioned translation occurs is not quite in our technological capabilities.

Carousel of Progress
(1964 to present)
Alright, so Carousel of Progress is at Magic Kingdom, not Epcot. But its futurism would fit right in at its cross-town sister park. This show (it's not really a ride) was devised by Walt Disney for the 1964 World's Fair. In it, an animatronic family shows off how the latest technologies of different eras are making life easier, from the turn of the century ("our icebox now holds up to 50 pounds of ice!") on up. It was Disney's dream for the attraction to be continually renewed to keep up with changing times. But since the show was last updated in 1994, it is ripe ground for anachronisms and misguided visions of the future.

In the final scene, the family is shown playing a virtual-reality space-pilot game. The characters use a wearable joystick (a glove) to move a spaceship through a game. Real-world motion is mimicked onscreen--a lot like what Nintendo has done with the Wii and what Microsoft is looking into with Project Natal. The characters also reference "laser discs and high-def TVs". One of these technologies is ubiquitous today, and the other is nearly dead.

Also on display in this show is voice-activated home automation, in which the father character is able to adjust the oven just by saying "oven temperature to 375." While such functionality is certainly possible today, given recent advances in voice recognition and home automation, it's hard to imagine voice control being a more practical controller than, say, an iPhone.

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Fact-Checking 5 Epcot Rides That Predicted the Future

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Epcot has always been the most curious of Disney World's parks: a place of slow (and some might say boring) rides that focused more on education than on adrenaline-boosting thrills. This is a park where utopian ideals (the park's name originally stood for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow") meet multicultural reverence, with a huge section of the park devoted to miniature recreations of various countries.

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When Popular Mechanics magazine launched in 1902, it seemed almost impossible for our editors and writers to imagine what 2010 might look like, but that didn't stop them from trying. Since then, we've published countless predictions of scientists, inventors, and other visionaries as steam gave way to electricity, stone buildings were overshadowed by skyscrapers of concrete and steel, and advances in transportation and telecommunications seemed to shrink the world.

Now we live in an era we're used to thinking of as "the future." Though we still lack flying cars and jet packs (as predicted in 1928 and 1964), our clothes are made of milk (as we forecast in 1929), our foods are fortified with grass (1940), and our mail is sorted by robots and delivered by airplane (though perhaps not the way we anticipated in 1921). Surrounded by wonders and a fast-evolving culture of innovation, it's just as challenging today for us to imagine the next century as it must have been for our early 20th century colleagues to envision the fabled year 2000.

So we decided it was high time to take a look back at the predictions of the past, not only to score them on accuracy (some are shockingly prescient, some hilariously wrong) but also to pay tribute to the inventiveness of the past. We hope this collection of articles and essays, which first appeared in Popular Mechanics between 1903 and 1969, will inspire fabulous new visions as well as recalling the sense of wonder that previous generations of readers felt when they craned their necks at the first skyscrapers, read about the first heart transplant, and watched the first man walk on the moon. Power up your personal helicopter and join us on a glorious adventure in the many wonderful worlds of tomorrow.

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TRUE!
Prediction 1942: Push Button Phones

Prediction 1925: Curing Rickets

Prediction 1940: Concept Car

Prediction 1957: Flying Fan Vehicle

Prediction 1968: Smell Print

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Gregory Benford and the Editors of Popular Mechanics

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When Popular Mechanics magazine launched in 1902, it seemed almost impossible for our editors and writers to imagine what 2010 might look like, but that didn't stop them from trying. Since then, we've published countless predictions of scientists, inventors, and other visionaries as steam gave way to electricity, stone buildings were overshadowed by skyscrapers of concrete and steel, and advances in transportation and telecommunications seemed to shrink the world.

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Some bizarre concepts resemble cars today - others are out of this world

Vehicles were rarely sold but would be produced by car firms to show off

They introduced heated seats, proximity sensors and rear view cameras

Display of 19 concept cars is at High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia

From a battered metallic 'electric egg' to an angular rocket, these are how the world's top designers once thought the cars of the future would look.

An exhibition has brought together 19 concept cars over the ages, and while some may resemble what we have today, others are out of this world.

With names like Cyclone and Thunderbolt, the designs were almost never destined for sale. Instead they were a way for fiercely competitive car firms to flex their muscle and put a stamp on history.

And they introduced revolutionary ideas which would go into mainstream production decades later, such as heated seats, proximity sensors and rear view cameras.

The concept cars have been collected from across Europe and the U.S. for a new exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

They were all built as fully-functioning cars - but many have not been driven for several years.

Included in the exhibit are the 1942 L'Oeuf électrique (Electric Egg), created by French engineer Paul Arzens for his personal use in the streets of Paris during the Second World War.

And the designs resurged after the war ended, with General Motors producing the rocket-shaped Firebird XP-21 in 1953 which had hints of the space race that was to come.

Taking influence from a real jet, the car even ran on a gas turbine - which proved far too expensive to enter commercial production.

Experimental and concept cars surged in popularity in the 1930s, after the automobile turned from simply a modern mode of transport into a statement of style and independence.

They became known as 'dream cars' in the 1950s, and allowed engineers the freedom to invent new technology which would find a practical outlet in cars produced decades later.

Hundreds were produced by designers as diverse as European artists and American car giants.

The designs in the exhibition, which date from 1932 to the present day, chronicle battles to conquer fashion trends which either seem outdated, have since resurged or both.

One such contest was for the 'ultimate wedge', won in the minds of some by Italian firm Carrozzeria Bertone's Stratos HF Zero in 1970 - rising just 33 inches off the road.

Bizarrely enough, the bright orange triangular profile of the car resembles many of the European supercars of today.

The exhibition opens on May 22 and lasts until September 7.

It explores the designs through five themes: individual makers, the impact of styling, visionary designers, the design process, and the influence of automobile fairs.

As well as the actual cars, the exhibition includes conceptual drawings, patents and scale models.

Museum director Michael Shapiro said: 'Our previous exhibition was tremendously successful in bringing new audiences to the museum.

'With Dream Cars, we continue our commitment to showcasing the importance of design and encouraging future innovation.'

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Predictions of Dream Cars of the future through the ages

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Some bizarre concepts resemble cars today - others are out of this world Vehicles were rarely sold but would be produced by car firms to show off They introduced heated seats, proximity sensors and rear view cameras Display of 19 concept cars is at High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia From a battered metallic 'electric egg' to an angular rocket, these are how the world's top designers once thought the cars of the future would look.

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In the 1930s journalists from publications like the New York Times and magazine would regularly visit Nikola Tesla at his home on the 20th floor of the Hotel Governor Clinton in Manhattan. There the elderly Tesla would regale them with stories of his early days as an inventor and often opined about what was in store for the future.

Last year we looked at Tesla's prediction that eugenics and the forced sterilization of criminals and other supposed undesirables would somehow purify the human race by the year 2100. Today we have more from that particular article which appeared in the February 9, 1935, issue of Liberty magazine. The article is unique because it wasn't conducted as a simple interview like so many of Tesla's other media appearances from this time, but rather is credited as "by Nikola Tesla, as told to George Sylvester Viereck."

It's not clear where this particular article was written, but Tesla's friendly relationship with Viereck leads me to believe it may not have been at his Manhattan hotel home. Interviews with Tesla at this time would usually occur at the Hotel, but Tesla would sometimes dine with Viereck and his family at Viereck's home on Riverside Drive, meaning that it's possible they could have written it there.

Viereck attached himself to many important people of his time, conducting interviews with such notable figures as Albert Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt and even Adolf Hitler. As a German-American living in New York, Viereck was a rather notorious propagandist for the Nazi regime and was tried and imprisoned in 1942 for failing to register with the U.S. government as such. He was released from prison in 1947, a few years after Tesla's death in 1943. It's not clear if they had remained friends after the government started to become concerned about Viereck's activities in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Tesla had interesting theories on religion, science and the nature of humanity which we'll look at in a future post, but for the time being I've pulled some of the more interesting (and often accurate) predictions Tesla had for the future of the world.
Creation of the EPA
The creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was still 35 years away, but Tesla predicted a similar agency's creation within a hundred years.

Hygiene, physical culture will be recognized branches of education and government. The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War. The pollution of our beaches such as exists today around New York City will seem as unthinkable to our children and grandchildren as life without plumbing seems to us. Our water supply will be far more carefully supervised, and only a lunatic will drink unsterilized water.

Education, War and the Newspapers of Tomorrow
Tesla imagined a world where new scientific discoveries, rather than war, would become a priority for humanity.

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere " stick " in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.

Health and Diet
Toward the end of Tesla's life he had developed strange theories about the optimal human diet. He dined on little more than milk and honey in his final days, believing that this was the purest form of food. Tesla lost an enormous amount of weight and was looking quite ghastly by the early 1940s. This meager diet and his gaunt appearance contributed to the common misconception that he was penniless at the end of his life.

Morepeople die or grow sick from polluted water than from coffee, tea, tobacco, and other stimulants. I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat. I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system with harmful ingredients. Bernarr Macfadden has shown how it is possible to provide palatable food based upon natural products such as milk, honey, and wheat. I believe that the food which is served today in his penny restaurants will be the basis of epicurean meals in the smartest banquet halls of the twenty-first century.

There will be enough wheat and wheat products to feed the entire world, including the teeming millions of China and India, now chronically on the verge of starvation. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

Robots
Tesla's work in robotics began in the late 1890s when he patented his remote-controlled boat, an invention that absolutely stunned onlookers at the 1898 Electrical Exhibition at Madison Square Garden.

At present we suffer from the derangement of our civilization because we have not yet completely adjusted ourselves to the machine age. The solution of our problems does not lie in destroying but in mastering the machine.

Innumerable activities still performed by human hands today will be performed by automatons. At this very moment scientists working in the laboratories of American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a " thinking machine." I anticipated this development.

I actually constructed " robots." Today the robot is an accepted fact, but the principle has not been pushed far enough. In the twenty-first century the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. There is no reason at all why most of this should not come to pass in less than a century, freeing mankind to pursue its higher aspirations.

Cheap Energy and the Management of Natural Resources

Long before the next century dawns, systematic reforestation and the scientific management of natural resources will have made an end of all devastating droughts, forest fires, and floods. The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines.

Tesla was a visionary whose many contributions to the world are being celebrated today more than ever. And while his idea of the perfect diet may have been a bit strange, he clearly understood many of the things that 21st century Americans would value (like clean air, clean food, and our "thinking machines") as we stumble into the future.

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About Matt Novak

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Nikola Tesla's Amazing Predictions for the 21st Century

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In the 1930s journalists from publications like the New York Times and magazine would regularly visit Nikola Tesla at his home on the 20th floor of the Hotel Governor Clinton in Manhattan. There the elderly Tesla would regale them with stories of his early days as an inventor and often opined about what was in store for the future.

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Clothing Of The Future - Clothing in The Year 2000

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A hilarious clip depicting what designers sometime around the 1930's thought fashion in 2000 would look like. Watch for the headlight hair accessory.

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While there's no way we can really know what the future holds, that hasn't stopped people from trying to make some guesses. The year 2000 was a magical, mystical number, and now that we're a decade and a half into it, we should be on our way to making many of these predictions come true.

Right?

10. Arthur C. Clarke's Vision of the 21st Century

(Images: MGM via Wikipedia; Piers Bizony)

Arthur C. Clarke is the visionary best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey; it's not surprising that he has a lot to say on what he thought was going to be happening in the year he so famously wrote about.

According to Clarke, predictions for the future are either way too conservative or way too unbelievable; the one thing that's absolutely true about the future is that it's a fantastic place. Developments in satellites and communication will make it possible to reach anyone, anywhere - even if you don't know where, exactly, that "where" is. All places will be connected, business can be done anywhere at any time. Commuting will be replaced by communication, and cities won't be necessary anymore.

Dolphins and apes will be engineered to become more useful, the next generation of domestic servants. (Clarke says we're slacking a bit on that, and that all the animal assistance we have now was largely the result of our prehistoric ancestor's efforts - so we'd better get cracking on that.)

Clarke also predicts that humans as they were in 1964 are little more than an evolutionary stepping stone, but not in the way Darwin was thinking. Biological evolution will all but cease with us, he says, and instead, we'll give birth to a new kind of evolution: technological and mechanical evolution. Biological abilities won't be obsolete, though, with developments in printing new knowledge and experiences directly onto the brain.

Deep freezing will be used to preserve people suffering from a disease or disorder that can't be cured yet, thawed when there is a cure. He also sees deep freezing people in order to undergo journeys of thousands and thousands of years, exploring the distant corners of the galaxy. He also doesn't buy into the idea of life in our solar system or on Mars, suggesting that going outside of our galaxy and meeting other life forms will be the next great adventure for the human race.

In 2001, Clarke very appropriately made some predictions for the next hundred years. In 2015? The quantum generator has given us complete control over all matter at the atomic level. In 2016, all currencies are rendered obsolete and, in 2017, Clarke turns 100 and stays at the Hilton Orbiter.

9. The Iron Boys of the Future

After the end of World War One, the entire world was faced with the harsh realities of what had been conflict on a global scale and causalities like no one had ever seen. People were definitely not optimistic enough to think that it really was the war to end all wars, and they started looking to the future. For them, it wasn't a future free of conflict, but a future where robots would do all the fighting and human casualties would be non-existent.

Instead of doughboys, newspapers like the San Antonio Light ran news stories about how it would be the iron boys fighting our battles for us. The idea was massive throughout the 1930s, and the newspaper ran a series of illustrations showing just what the robot soldier would look like. Made even more eerie by their general, overall human appearance, the robots have machine guns for heads, cameras for eyes, and scouts had the capability to fly and record what was going on around them.

And when the robots were damaged, it was envisioned that there would be special robot hospitals to replace whatever parts needed replacing, getting the iron boys back out onto the battlefield.

8. 1930's Fashion Designers Predict Clothing Trends in 2000

In a pretty epic short film segment spotlighting the designs of fashion designers in 1930s, we get a look at what it was thought we were going to be wearing going into the new century.

One designer goes so far as to suggest that skirts will be a thing of the past, and women will be dressing in trousers. Several suggest that an outfit will be adaptable, changing from formal daytime wear to man-hunting evening wear with a few quick additions, subtractions or adjustments. One woman even has her own presumably battery-powered headlight, secured in her hair to help her find the right man. Dresses will be aluminum or made of netting, and some will even be climate-adjusting.

Shaving will be a thing of the past for men, along with ties and pockets. He will, however, wear his phone attached to his chest (we'll give them points for that one), and carry a little pouch for his money, his keys, and candy for the ladies.

7. Issac Asimov

Asimov made some pretty reserved predictions for what was going to be coming in the next half a century and some he was spot-on about. He predicted that robots were going to be the thing, and while they're without a doubt still up-and-coming, his thoughts on the idea of robots are a little more reserved than you might expect. He suggested that while they were going to be in every home, they were going to be rather large still, clumsy, and slow, a far cry from robots indistinguishable from real humans. He also predicted that robots were going to be taking over the jobs of people, a concept that's still looming on the horizon.

He also predicts online education, where students will learn through their televisions and through pre-recorded tapes rather than from real, live teachers. In the 1960s, the idea of learning from a person on the screen was so disturbing that the National Education Association officially declared that they had no plans to implement such a program any time in the future.

Other predictions he made were a little farther from the mark. Asimov stated that there were going to be moon colonies established by now, and car manufacturers were going to be creating special vehicles for us to purchase that were adapted specifically to lunar terrain. Glow panels on walls were supposed to be the thing to have in your house, creating colors, patterns and lighting based on a touch.

Kitchens were also supposed to be fully automated, and while we're getting there, we're not quite at his stage of creating instant meals from fully frozen foodstuffs.

6. The Associated Press's Collection of Experts

The Associated Press polled a series of experts on a variety of topics, and most of their predictions were either incredibly optimistic or incredibly dire.

They stated that a massive, globally ruling body - headed in large part by a benevolent United States - would be looking out for the best interests of up-and-coming nations. And in addition to some of the standard predictions about a more advanced home, there were also a couple rather non-traditional guesses that we only wish had come true.

The experts consulted by the Associated Press predicted that as America - and the world - got more and more accustomed to labor-intensive jobs, the work force would become even more of a well-oiled machine. Less class struggles would be taking place as all kinds of jobs became more accepted, and the benefits from these jobs would become more and more socialized. And, best of all, there were predictions of government's limitation of the work week from anywhere between 35 and 20 hours a week.

There was also supposed to be a resurgence of agriculture, not only with new, scientific advances in crop quality and consistency, but experts predicted that farmers would be producing much, much more food on less land; they also said that farmers would have greater security in the financial situations.

Medicine was supposed to make massive leaps forward, and they predicted the average life span of women rising to 80 years, and men rising to 75 years. Interestingly, they predict that cancer won't be entirely cured, and baldness will present another challenge.

Their take on the 21st century woman is also pretty fascinating. Women will gain Amazonian stature, with the perfection of nutrition that maximizes muscle and minimizes fat. They were sure that they would be seeing women competing alongside men in all kinds of sports as well as in the business world. They even went so far as to suggest there just might be a female president.

5. President Harry S. Truman's Predictions for 2000

(Image: German Federal Archives, cc-sa-3.0 DE)

The nation had just been through two world wars and a depression - things were tough all over the globe. So perhaps it's not surprising that President Harry S. Truman saw the need for a little optimism in his predictions for the year 2000.

He saw world peace, and a world that had harnessed - and agreed upon - control over atomic power and nuclear weapons. Communism would fall, not because of war but because they would see the way. The U.N. would be a successful, peace-keeping organization, and the U.S. would be there to lend a helping hand to any nation that needed it.

(Image: whoever, whomever, cc-nc-4.0 - READ FULL ARTICLE HERE)

The distribution of wealth would become more fair; standards of living would be up, the middle class would be making more, and farmers would be supported by government plans to reward them for their labors. There would be no more monopolies, taxes would be fairly charged, insurance and benefits for workers would be better. ( Full article here.)

4. Waldemar Kaempffert, New York Times

(Image: Popular Mechanics via Modern Mechanix)

The science editor for the New York Times in 1950, Kaempffert uses the imaginary family of the Dobsons to illustrate what he thinks life will be like in the year 2000. They live in Tottenville, a super-green, super-clean city where it's a crime to burn coal or pollute the air. There's double-decker highways, everything is run off solar power, homes are mass-produced, incredibly affordable and highly economical.

Everything in the home is synthetic, waterproof, and washable with a hose. Food is delivered in brick form, and it's cooked on electric stoves in a matter of a few minutes. Everything is recycled and some things, like wood pulp, sawdust, table linens and (for some reason) underwear is processed and turned into candy.

He also says that advances in technology will allow for the creation of a weather forecasting machine that is capable of predicting the weather with complete accuracy for 24 hours in advance. With this ability, mankind can ensure that storms and disasters are diverted before they happen.

He does get a few things amazingly right. Kaempffert sees a world where businessmen hold conferences with colleagues on the other side of the world, all through telephones and televisions with screens and the power to broadcast picture as well as sound. His fictional Mrs. Dobson does all her shopping through the same interactive television screens, browsing the wares of department stores without ever leaving her home.

3. The Ladies' Home Journal, Predictions for 2000 from 1900

Making predictions for 50 years in the future is hard enough, and taking on a whole century is just ambitious - that's exactly what an article in a 1900s edition of the Ladies' Home Journal did.

The alphabet was going to look quite a bit different - spelling words phonetically was going to be the next big thing, and three useless letters - X, Q, and C - were going to be removed from the alphabet. And where were you going to be learning about this new type of alphabet? Free schools and universities, where anyone could receive a quality education for no cost. These free schools would also makes sure their students were properly fed, received medical, dental and eye care, along with rides to and from school, all at no charge.

The natural world was going to look pretty different. Roses were to come in blue, black and green, and they were going to be as large as cabbages. Peas would be as big as beets, strawberries the size of apples, and all animals raised for food were to have been raised to their non-essential parts (horns, lungs, and bones) were smaller so nutrients and resources weren't diverted from the parts that we eat. Wild animals would be a thing of the past, horses made all but extinct because of the popularity of the car, and men and women alike would think nothing of walking anywhere they needed to go under ten miles. ( Read full article.)

They also predicted mobile forts and aerial ships, along with the ability to beam images, message and music around the world with no wires.

2. Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein also put forward a series of predictions for the future in 1952. For him, the 21st century was going to be a place where you could step out of your front door and head off to another planet, with mass transit extending to interplanetary travel. We'll have thoroughly explored our solar system and be building ships that can go even farther, we'll have met intelligent life on Mars, and we'll be able to travel even the shortest terrestrial distances in the blink of an eye.

He also talks about social changes; he says that new advances and changes in the idea of contraception will completely change the male-female dynamic, and psychology will become a concrete, measurable, more scientific endeavor. He also says that modern art will disappear and become a tool of the psychologist. Diseases like cancer and the common cold will be non-existent, and houses will look so incredibly different that the house of the 1950s will look archaic in comparison.

There was one prediction that was pretty incredibly spot-on, though. Heinlein said that phones were going to be small enough to fit in a purse, while they were also able to answer simple questions and transmit video images as well as sound.

He stressed that there were a few things that we were just never going to get, including time travel, faster than light travel, robots indistinguishable from humans, life created in a lab and, sadly, an end to war.

1. The Saturday Evening Post's Predictions for the Home of 1950

As we've said, predicting the future is tricky business. It's easy to scoff at the rather idealized version of the 21st century that some people had, but perhaps more enlightening is if we backtrack even further. In 1900, the Saturday Evening Post ran a full-page article predicting what life was going to be like in the average home in the year 1950.

In 1900, people were imagining a world where the interior temperature of your home could not just be regulated, but could be set at a particular temperature to ensure that you were never too hot or too cold. Homes would be equipped with the ability to not only produce heat, but to produce cooler air in the hot months. Light bulbs are no longer bare and glaring, but pleasantly covered to give off a diffuse light capable of lighting the entire room instead of just one point, and they'll even have the capability of turning on by themselves when it gets dark.

Food packaging is insect-proof, and cold storage cabinets mean food stays fresh for longer. Kitchens are no longer the dirtiest place in the home, there's no more smoke or ashes, no smell from the wood fire - not with the new electric stoves and gadgets like the automatic egg-beater. In fact, electricity is used for everything in the home - it keeps the house warm and cool, it runs a sewing machine, and it even provides a regular, predictable current to warm the curling iron of the house's young daughter.

More modern modes of transportation - the automobile - have replaced horse-drawn carriages, and in doing so, the streets are cleaner and all but bug-free. There's no more street filth, and in fact, with the advent of more hygienic, above-ground homes, families don't keep cats to get rid of the mice, but instead raise mice to feed the cats!

Looking at the number of predictions made during the middle of the century that today go unfulfilled can be a little bit more than depressing. There's so many amazing ideas out there, and so many that we're so far away from.... but looking at the predictions for the amazing, heaven-on-earth that they believed 1950 held truly makes us realize the true nature of the paradise around us today.
Keep reading - enjoy more articles from our History category here.

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10 Predictions Made About the 21st Century From 50 Years Ago - Urban Ghosts Media

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While there's no way we can really know what the future holds, that hasn't stopped people from trying to make some guesses. The year 2000 was a magical, mystical number, and now that we're a decade and a half into it, we should be on our way to making many of these predictions come true.

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Shortly before he died in 1930, former cabinet minister and leading lawyer FE Smith, a friend of Winston Churchill and one of the more outspoken British politicians of his age, wrote a book containing predictions of how the world would look in 100 years' time. They covered science, lifestyles, politics and war. So what did he say?

Health/lifespan

Smith, a former Lord Chancellor who became the Earl of Birkenhead in 1922, was writing in a period when tuberculosis was a major killer in the UK and around the world. He was optimistic enough to suggest the eradication of this and other epidemic diseases was "fairly certain" by 2030, as was "the discovery of cures for such scourges as cancer".

Death from old age could also be delayed, Smith thought. Scientists would create injections containing an unspecified substance bringing "rejuvenations", which would be used to prolong the average lifespan to as much as 150 years.

Smith acknowledged this would present "grave problems" from an "immense increase in population". He also foresaw extreme inter-generational inequality, wondering "how will youths of 20 be able to compete in the professions or business against vigorous men still in their prime at 120, with a century of experience on which to draw"?

Work and leisure

Mechanisation would mean a "gradual contraction" of hours worked, Smith believed. By 2030 it was likely the "average week of the factory hand will consist of 16 or perhaps 24 hours", which no worker could possibly "grudge". But, with factories largely automated, work would provide little scope for self-fulfilment, becoming "supremely easy and supremely dull", consisting largely of supervising machines. It didn't occur to Smith, in an age before widespread use of computers, that the machines might become self-monitoring.

The cut in hours hasn't happened yet. According to figures from the OECD group of industrialised nations, the lowest average weekly hours worked in a main job in 2013 were 30, in the Netherlands. The highest figure was 47.9, in Turkey. In the UK it was 36.5, with the US among the countries for which information was not provided.

Smith believed that, despite the shortening of hours, everyone would earn enough by 2030 to afford to play football, cricket or tennis in their spare time. But one of the big winners in this more leisure-rich world would be fox-hunting, one of his own hobbies. "As wealth increases, we shall all be able to ride to hounds," he said.

Men would free up even more time with changes to sartorial rules. By 2030 they would be expected to own only two outfits, one for leisure and the other for more formal occasions.

John Logie-Baird had demonstrated television in the late 1920s and Smith was excited by the idea. He said that by 2030 full "stereoscopic television in full natural colours" would be available in people's homes, with proper loudspeaker-quality sound. This meant exiled US citizens would be able to watch any baseball match and, in cricket, "the MCC selection committee, in conclave at Lord's, will be able to follow the fortunes of an English eleven through the days (or weeks) of an Australian Test match".

Air travel

Smith, who had grown up before cars were invented, predicted they would be largely obsolete for all but the shortest journeys by 2030, with aeroplane ownership common. The creation of engines weighing only one ounce (28g) per unit of horsepower would allow lightweight, vertical take-off craft, capable of speeds of up to 400mph.

"Thus... the man of 2030 will set off for the weekend, after his work, in a small, swift aeroplane, as reliable and cheap as the motor-car on which we depend today," he wrote. The idea of a weekend would be different in a world where people only worked two hours a day or two full-time days, and transport would enable more adventurous time off. "Ski-ing parties in Greenland will be made up in London clubs on Saturday mornings," wrote Smith, "and translated into action before the same evening."

The era of low-cost airlines has made air travel readily available, but there is some way to go before aeroplanes are widely owned. In its latest figures, for 2013, the US-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association said there were more than 360,000 general aviation craft, "ranging from two-seater training aircraft and utility helicopters to international business jets". The figures do not include normal commercial or military flights. As the world's population is currently thought to be around seven billion, there is one personally owned/used plane for every 19,500 or so people.

Smith also foresaw sub-three-hour transatlantic passenger flights becoming commonplace. Concorde, the supersonic plane co-developed by France and the UK, managed this but it has since been scrapped, meaning most passenger trips between New York and London or Paris take more than seven hours.

Smith thought that by 2030 the first preparations for a manned mission to Mars would be under way, but that the first "half a dozen" attempts could miss the planet entirely, leaving astronauts to die onboard as they drifted further from Earth.

Energy

Smith predicted the increased use of cheap, clean energy from utilising the Earth's water supply. He seemed to base his ideas on an interpretation of Einsteinian physics, which said there was an equivalence between mass and energy. He outlined an eccentric use by scientists who managed to turn atoms in water into a viable source. "By utilising some 50,000 tons of water, the amount displaced by a large liner, it would be possible to remove Ireland to the deeper portion of the Atlantic Ocean," Smith said.

The heat obtainable from same quantity of water could be used keep polar regions "at the temperature of the Sahara for a thousand years", he added, something most scientists would not want to happen today.

But Smith was more ambivalent about what we now call renewable sources of energy. Wind was useful and universal, but tidal power more unevenly distributed. There was another concern. "By utilising tidal energy to any large extent, we should diminish the speed of the earth's rotation," said Smith. If tidal energy was overused, a "48-hour day is a possibility in the far future", he added.

War

The tank had only been around since WW1 and Smith was full of excitement about possibilities for development. They could become "entirely unmanned" within a century, he said.

"The commanders of tank forces will be carried in the air above their commands," he said, "and thus will be able to watch the course of operations and control their progress by wireless telephony." Or this could happen in a "distant control room", possibly underground. Birkenhead said this would make war "more humane".

In April this year, Russia revealed the Taifun-M, an unmanned ground vehicle for defending missile sites. And despite the focus being on aerial vehicles, there are plenty of other plans for "land drones".

Saharan sea

Given the improvements to transport, especially flight, the Sahara would become "a new playground for all Europe". A canal would be cut from the Mediterranean, ensuring "a new inland sea must surely be created. Its shores, now barren, would rival Florida for fertile charm".

Smith thought this would be popular from October to May, when temperatures would be at their most pleasant and a little less clement around the Mediterranean. The scheme was to be at least under way by 2030.

Politics

Television would make it feasible to revive the direct democracy of ancient Greek city-states, with the whole population, rather than elected representatives, able to vote on issues. Political leaders would make their case direct to the public. Communication speed would allow votes to be concluded within 20 minutes.

People would be better informed as advances in psychology, widely taught in schools, would leave them "immune from specious appeals to sentiment and illogical reasoning".

Smith thought it unlikely the party system would survive in this climate and felt that by 2030 people would be more content with the idea of "rule of experts".

But the British Empire would survive, with India staying part of it, although the capital might move from London to somewhere in Canada or Australia, Smith predicted.

Family/eugenics

Smith, in common with many theorists of the 19th Century and early 20th Century, predicted a greater use of eugenics - the practice of attempting to "improve" the human race through control of reproduction.

He claimed a clever young man would "consider his fiancee's hereditary complexion before proposing marriage". In return, "the young woman of that day will refuse him because he has inherited a gene from his father which will predispose their children to quarrelsomeness".

Smith questioned fears that eugenics might be used to create a "slave race" to carry out drudgery while others enjoyed more leisure, saying: "It is far more likely that men will work as machine-minders for one or two hours a day and be free to devote the rest of their energies to whatever form of activity they enjoy."

But the state would "certainly legislate to prohibit, or compulsorily to sterilise, such a marriage" as was likely to produce children "congenitally criminal and mentally repulsive". It would instead encourage good unions, as "prevention is better than Broadmoor". The state would also "render non-productive" unions between criminals.

Food and drugs

Synthetic food, produced in laboratories, would overtake conventional agriculture "in civilised lands" to feed the expanding population with ease, Smith said. "From one 'parent' steak of choice tenderness, it will be possible to grow as large and juicy a steak as can be desired." The prediction has echoes of the work currently being done on synthetic meat.

But farming the land would survive as a "rich man's hobby". Someone born in the 21st Century may, "in his wealthy rejuvenation, boast that the bread he eats is made from wheat which grows in his own fields".

Scientific creation of food would make cities no longer a "parasite" on the country but a "self-supporting unit". Smith predicted that town and country would become blurred in to one continuous, manicured landscape, where weeds had been eradicated.

Chemists would have devised new "physiologically pleasant substances" to go with tobacco, alcohol and caffeine. "Should chemistry in the next hundred years be able to discover new substances as pleasant and harmless as tobacco," he wrote, "yet each possessing a different effect on the consumer, it will have earned the thanks of every hard-worked man and woman in the world."

Smith himself died at the age of 58, his body worn out by years of excessive drinking and smoking.
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Strange predictions for the future from 1930

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Shortly before he died in 1930, former cabinet minister and leading lawyer FE Smith, a friend of Winston Churchill and one of the more outspoken British politicians of his age, wrote a book containing predictions of how the world would look in 100 years' time. They covered science, lifestyles, politics and war.

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11 ridiculous future predictions from the 1900 world's fair - and 3 that came true.

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In 1899, French artist Jean-Marc Côté created a card series imagining the world in the year 2000. The results were ... interesting, to say the least.