10 Craziest Predictions for the Future from the Past Found

People love to fantasize about the future. But most people in history who tried to predict the future were wrong. However, this never stopped trying, and several visionaries were quite good at it. Of course, there was Leonardo da Vinci with his helicopters and refrigerators, and Joseph Glanville, who in 1661 suggested that flying to the moon and communicating using “magnetic waves” might be something useful. But there were also completely crazy assumptions. Here are the top 10 of them.

What people predict inevitably says more about their hopes and fears than about the actual future. Predictions are generated around important dates and dramatic world events. Rapid technological revolutions in the 19th century gave rise to new anxieties as well as optimism. Visions of the future of the 1960s included both a space age, boundless enthusiasm for “humanity can do anything!” and fear if nuclear weapons made life on Earth impossible. The reality lies somewhere in between the two, experts say. But artists presented the most extraordinary assumptions about distant times.

March of the Intellect, 1829

Progress looks incredible in cartoonist William Heath’s satire: a mechanized, steam-powered huge horse with smoking nostrils; a vacuum tube that will take you anywhere in the world, such as Bengal; a flying gargoyle whale delivering prisoners to New South Wales (Australia); a garbage man gnawing on a whole pineapple; winged postman bat. William Heath even suggested that humanity could harness swans to a boat.

Test tube baby, 19th century

In his 20th Century trilogy, written in the 1880s and ’90s, French writer and illustrator Albert Robida introduced video conferencing, the Ring video intercom, the pneumatic tube train system, industrialized food production, and a disgusting, polluted world where “our streams are teeming with pathogenic enzymes.” Besides, he was thinking about test tube babies.

City with waterproof roofs, 19th century

The future business cards of the German chocolate company Hildebrands depicted all sorts of wonders: buildings that could be moved on rails by steam engines, a penny-farthing water bike and a summer holiday at the North Pole – which could probably become a reality in about 30 years. In addition, he believed that there should be waterproof roofs in the future.

Congestion, 1901-1914

Visions of the future of transportation often featured skies filled with aircraft, but by and large, road transport remained boring due to gravity. French illustrator Robide had a more interesting version of the future: an animalistic sky transport.

Bathroom in 2000, 1899

The 2000 images were commissioned by artist Jean-Marc Côté from a French toy manufacturer for the 1900 Paris Exhibition, and became famous when Isaac Asimov republished them in 1986. It had everything: horse-riding hippos and seahorse rides; bus pulled by whales; a scientist who studies huge, scary looking “germs”. But there was also a bathroom where everything was automated – the lady just had to sit on the chair, and the robots would do all the magic.

School 2000, view from 1899

Another postcard from 2000, presenting a rather bleak vision of the school of the future. Côté was not the only one who believed that there were better solutions for education than trying to explain the complex equations of the day to ninth-graders through the charisma of a teacher: in the late 1950s, Arthur Radebau imagined each student being seated in front of a whirring, clicking machine, ” so that he may advance as quickly as his ability warrants.”

Metropolis, 1927

Fritz Lang, in his silent film Metropolis, showed a vision of the future set in the year 2000 that he found disturbing: the super-rich at the top of the houses in one shot, the workers at the bottom. This movie also shows a woman getting burned, only to be revealed to be a robot. H.G. Wells called it “the stupidest film ever.”

Automated house, 1929

Frances Gabe fantasized about a self-cleaning house that was designed in the style of the 1980s. According to her idea, the heroine of the drawing turned a bungalow in Oregon into a giant automated cleaning machine. The inventor was almost close to modern developments, and maybe the time of her future was ahead. After all, in the present there are already “smart assistants” who clean the house.

Playing board games in a self-driving car, 1957

The self-driving (i.e. self-driving) car was just an engraving in 1957, but now it is almost here. In the future that was proposed in the 20th century, a family could safely drive and not look at the road, but play board games. In the meantime, drivers in Germany will soon be allowed to take their hands off the wheel.

Underwater car, 1977

The underwater sports car from the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” has not yet received a worthy analogue in the present. But it could be the next development of scientists. Although in fact the film was about an active submarine nicknamed Wet Nellie, which is now owned by Elon Musk.