Our vision of the future has always been more complex than the hoverboards or self-lacing sneakers from the Robert Zemeckis films. Of course, different bad (and sometimes good) sci-fi films have featured different images: food pills, flying cars, personal jetpacks, and robotic butlers.
But futurologists also predicted the emergence of whole wonderful new worlds, which are now completely forgotten - for example, the world in which the letters C, X and Q disappeared from the English alphabet. And it is generally better not to remember the world in which sweets are made from worn linen.
So, this article contains the most daring predictions that never became reality.
1900
Farewell to letters C, X and Q
"These predictions will seem strange, almost impossible," was the beginning of an article published in 1900 in Ladies' Home Journal. "Even though they appeared in America's most conservative and educated minds."
These "educated minds" suggested that by 2000 some letters of the English alphabet would simply disappear:
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“In the English everyday alphabet, there will be no C, X and Q. They will be discarded as unnecessary. Words will be written as they sound, first it will happen in newspapers. English will become the language of capacious words expressing capacious ideas, and will be the most widely spoken in the world. The second will be Russian."
1909
Flying bicycles in empty cities
In 1909, Jules Bois, who was called in the New York Times, now a "mystic", then a "writer", then a "Frenchman", accurately predicted the change in the ideal of female beauty characteristic of that era:
"Physical weakness, extreme sophistication of facial features and acceptance of more modest positions in public life, will be replaced by a type [of beauty] that combines beauty and muscle development."
He later went further and made a series of lower quality predictions in which he argued that:
“A kind of flying bicycle will be invented that will allow everyone to move through the air, well above the ground. It is unlikely that anyone will want to stay in cities overnight, these will be just places to do business. People of all classes will live in rural areas or garden cities far from densely populated areas."
1950
All items will be covered with plastic, and food will be delivered in pieces of ice
An article in Popular Mechanics, written by Waldemar Kempfert, then Science Editor for The New York Times, predicted a future in which everything is either disposable or recyclable.
Kempfert illustrated his point of view with the example of the conditional Dobson family living in the conditional city of Tottenville (population about one hundred thousand people).
“When Jane Dobson is cleaning, she just directs the hose to everything in the house,” Kempfert wrote. - "Why not? Furniture (including upholstery), carpets, draperies, scratch-resistant floors are all made of artificial fabric or water-repellent plastic. After the water disappears into a drain in the middle of the floor (which is later covered with a synthetic fiber mat), Jane directs a stream of hot air and dries things."
With the advent of frozen food in the form of bricks, he adds, “cooking as an art will only survive in the memory of old people. Some die-hard people still boil chicken or roast lamb's legs, but experts have invented ways to deep-freeze partially cooked cuts of meat. Even milk and soup are delivered in the form of frozen bricks."
Plus, Jane Dobson can cook a steak in less than three minutes, and a complex multi-course table never takes more than half an hour. Yes, and old bedding (and even underwear) is recycled and turned into candy.
1950
3D television supplemented by "scent vision"
By 2000, "3D television will be commonplace and simplified enough that a small device will project images onto the living room wall to make them appear alive," according to an Associated Press article published in The Robensonian, the Lamberton newspaper in North Carolina. Fair enough, except for the part about incorporating scents into the television picture: "The room will automatically fill with the scent of a flower garden shown on the screen."
Another audio-visual prediction describes cinemas of the future as domed arenas with screens on all walls and ceilings.
“These surfaces will be a 'screen'. Most of the action, as now, will take place right in front of you. But something will happen above your head, something on the sides, and something even behind you"
1952
Space travel for everyone
In 1952, an article published in the Kentucky New Era by scientists from two different scientific gatherings - the International Astronautics Congress in London and the American Chemical Society in New York - happily predicted the disappearance of most diseases and the overpopulation of the Earth by the year 2000.
"In this future scenario, sunlight is the main form of energy production, and travel through space in rocket ships is a common and cost-effective form of travel."
Dr. Werner von Braun has testified that humans would have been able to overcome most of the challenges associated with space exploration by the late 1950s. “The first step to real navigation in space is the earth's moons, artificial satellites of the earth in the upper atmosphere,” paraphrased his words Kentucky New Era. “The people on board will constantly orbit the Earth to observe and report on any unusual activity that could threaten the peace of the planet. Resistance to earth's gravity with the help of the centrifugal force of rapid movement, will allow launching spaceships from these satellites using very moderate energy consumption, because there will be no atmosphere there.
1964
Underground houses with robotic kitchens
In 1964, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov presented what the 2014 World's Fair might look like through the eyes of a New York Times correspondent (there will be no World's Fair this year, so he was already wrong). Most of his predictions were extremely insightful, which is not surprising for a man who lived and breathed the future.
However, he also did not foresee cheap and effective birth control, vegetarian turkeys and smart technologies, and he mistakenly predicted the emergence of colonies on the moon, hovercraft settlements and underground cities.
“People will continue to flee nature to create a habitat that suits them better,” he wrote. “By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be used everywhere. Ceilings and walls will glow softly and color change at the touch of a button. Underground country houses, where you can easily change the temperature regardless of the weather, control the air purity and illumination, will be quite common."
“The kitchens will be equipped with auto-cookers that boil water and prepare coffee on their own, smear bread, fry, boil and beat eggs, fry bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ordered the night before and prepared for the right hour tomorrow morning,”he continued.
1972
Shared washrooms in hippy homes
Interior experts at the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern predicted that hippie fashions - or what they called "long hair culture" - would dictate the need for adequate housing by the year 2000. Shared bedrooms, nurseries and kitchens will become the norm.
"One large room for meetings, relaxation, group therapy and the like, will be sparsely furnished, but at least carpeted, as space, materials and group interaction will make sitting on the floor very important," suggested one expert … "The dorm wing bedrooms will be designed for couples as group sex [will] be rare," the article adds. "But preference will be given to collectives over individual showers and toilets."
1982
Colonies on the Moon, of course
In 1982, the New York Times surveyed futurists (including the famous singularity theory of Ray Kurzweil) to find out what the next 20 years would bring. Kurzweil's conservative predictions included electric vehicles, small families (“one child or no children at all”), and an increase in shared workspaces.
Independent futurist Barabara Hubbard promoted a much more radical vision for 2002.
There are resources on the moon and asteroids that are enough for thousands of planets like Earth, she told the newspaper. - "In 20 years you can create a space civilization." However, Hubbard warned that "infantile species" - humans - must "turn themselves away from destruction and be creative" in order to realize this dream.