10 Modern Things That Were Actually Predicted Way Before They Appeared

Inventors and science fiction writers excite us with their ideas. But the most amazing thing is that some of their ideas have become reality, even over the past century. Most of us probably don’t even realize that smartphones were predicted a long time before they appeared.

We at Bright Side found 10 incredible inventions that were described much earlier than they actually appeared.

1. A high-tech education system

The high-tech education system was predicted in En L’An 2000 and it is an image series depicting scientific advances that were imagined to be achieved by the year 2000. We don’t use helmets with wires for studying, but a lot of our work is already done by computers, and we don’t need to go to the library.

2. Headphones and TV

In 1953, the iconic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury predicted headphones. He also described huge flat screens that resemble modern TVs.

3. Transplants

The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, in her novel in 1818 just started to talk about the reanimation of dead bodies with electricity and exchanging organs. This is really something incredible to write about a technology that we didn’t start to use until just a short time ago.

4. Airbuses

In En L’An 2000, artists imagined flying boats. Nowadays, airbuses, or airplanes, are widely used and have become a regular thing. And ours look much safer.

5. The rise of computers

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry. Many of his forecasts were amazingly accurate. He even predicted the rise of computers. Asimov was sure that in the early ’80s, society wouldn’t be able to live without them and each and every home would be equipped with this technology.

6. Credit cards

The person who first developed the idea of the credit card was the utopian science fiction writer Edward Bellamy. And it was described in his book Looking Backward in 1888.

7. Self-driving car

In 1953, Isaac Asimov presented Sally, a living car that drove itself and even communicated with others. Nowadays, we have this technology in progress, except for the communication part.

8. Video chatting

Again, this was predicted by the artists of En L’An 2000, when no video technology existed. At that time, it seemed too futuristic, but now it’s a normal routine.

9. Social networks

The Machine Stops is a science fiction story by Edward Morgan Forster. He wrote it in 1909 and he described how people mostly communicate with each other via screens. This is super similar to the internet age.

10. Automated bathrooms

This illustration from En L’An 2000 reminds us of many things in our beauty salons and special gadgets for bathrooms that only need an app to control the process.

Do you also have an idea of an invention that can work in future? Please leave your comment below!