The Year 2000, As Predicted in 1910

In 1910, a French illustrator named Villemard created a series of postcards which imagined life in the year 2000. He speculated that we would use motorized roller skates, firefighters would fly on batwings, and machines would dress and powder ladies automatically. As for school, as you can see, information will be simply downloaded into our heads.

Link via Gizmodo

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Actually, the guy had the right idea, more often than not. Even the motorized roller skates, which seems such a ridiculous idea when you put it like that, are very much available today under the brand name Segway (yes, they're not rollerblades, but they perform the exact same function). Aerial rescue is very much available at sea, we do have several models of "Aeronats with the long course", e.g. the Airbus A380, we do use quite a lot of power tools and cranes when building, the "phono-telegraphique" is available in a multitude of forms, and so forth.

It would've been quite impossible for Mr. Villemard to foresee the actual shape and working principles for the devices we're using these days, but he correctly identified several of the needs people had back then, needs people cared enough about that entire industries were built on top of them. Such as humankind's oldest dream: the motorized roller skate.