What People of the 1900s Thought the 2000s Would Be Like

People have always been interested in what the world will look like in the future. Even today, we may have a lot of assumptions about how the year 2100 may be. And it’s curious to find out which assumptions came true and which ones were, well, just a little off.

We at Bright Side learned about a few predictions from the past for what today would look like, and we decided to recreate them with our own illustrations.

1. How people thought transportation would advance

2. How video calls in the ’30s were imagined

3. In the past, they called this flying vehicle “the flying carpet.”

4. They thought that mail would be delivered by a rocket mailman.

5. How people thought barbers would style hair and beards

6. How a long-distance video call was imagined, but we don’t think they thought about the camera part...

7. People thought we’d have gigantic veggies and fruits.

8. Patients would get automatic prescriptions while they waited.

9. How they thought schoolwork in the future would look

10. They thought that in the year 2000, we’d move houses with trains.

11. Also they imagined that we would take walks on water.

12. It was believed that there would be roofs over cities to protect them from the weather.

13. They thought that we’d be able to change the weather with a “good weather machine.”

14. People in the past thought that we’d be receiving audio messages. Well, they were right, in a way.

15. They had an idea of electric scrubbing.

16. How they thought taking notes in the future would look

17. They thought that we’d have auto rollers.

18. Video calls were predicted in a magazine about electrical experiments.

19. It was probably believed that “air firefighters” would become real.

20. This audio journal seems to have predicted the radio and listening to the news.

Which prediction surprised you the most, and why? How do you think our lifestyle and technology will develop in 100 years?