“These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible,” reads the intro to a 1900 article printed in the Ladies Home Journal entitled ‘What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years.‘ And over a century later, many of them do. The “wisest and most careful men in our great institutions of science and learning” envisioned that by the year 2001, we humans would have willfully made all wild animals extinct to make room for ourselves, and we’d be eating sterile foods zipped from laboratories to our homes via pneumatic tubes. But some of these ideas are more prescient than others, accurately imagining innovations like factory farming and even the internet.

Wild Animals Don’t Exist Anymore, Except in Zoos

(image via: paleofuture)

“Man’s steadily increasing need for more space will eventually force untamed beasts to pay their way in the scheme of things, or join the species already extinct,” reads a 1926 article in the Galveston Daily News. That attitude was surprisingly common during the early 20th century, despite the fact that the predictions in the Ladies Home Journal article underestimated a century of future population growth by billions. The Ladies Home Journal article predicted that animals wouldn’t exist in the wild anymore at all, and would only be found in zoos, unless they were in use as livestock or service animals.

The article predicts that rats and mice will have been completely exterminated (along with mosquitoes, flies and roaches, which would require filling in all swamplands and chemically treating all still-water streams) and that cows will be so fat, they’ll be as slow as livestock pigs. “Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.” Sounds like modern-day conditions at many of America’s largest factory farms.

Purchases and Pre-Cooked Meals Are Delivered via Pneumatic Tubes

(image via: machinelake)

In an era when compressed food tablets actually seemed like a great idea, sterile pre-cooked meals made in laboratories rather than kitchens were an appealing concept. The Ladies Home Journal article imagines that ready-cooked meals would zoom from these central labs to private homes via a vast system of pneumatic tubes. Equipped with all manner of electrical gadgets not found in homes, these laboratories would also be able to supply food cheaper than it would cost to cook for yourself, since they’re buying ingredients in such large quantities. You press a button, your food zips to you within minutes, and then you send the packaging and utensils back to be chemically cleaned. Store purchases and mail would be delivered in much the same way.

Furthermore, you’d never have to worry about anyone breathing on your food, or exposing it to the atmosphere of the busy streets. Shopkeepers would be arrested if they dared to store food that wasn’t essentially hermetically sealed, or if they sold “stale or adulterated produce.” The miracle of always-fresh produce would be achieved using liquid-air refrigerators.

The idea of pneumatic delivery hasn’t gone away altogether – some cities use pneumatic tubes to dispose of trash, and a company called the Foodtubes Project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transferring much of the UK’s deliveries from trucks on the roads to underground tubes.

The Suburb is the Promised Land for Taller, Healthier Americans

(image via: mediaarchitecture.at)

The suburbs seemed like utopia for people living in clogged, smoggy cities. The predictions of the day envisioned Americans not only living much longer thanks to quiet lives in the peaceful suburbs, but also be one to two inches taller on average thanks to better health “due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics.” In fact, suburbs would be so amazingly beneficial for mankind, city housing would be practically eliminated, and building in blocks would be illegal.

Americans, and humans in general, are indeed taller than we were in the year 1900, thanks to ample amounts of nutritious foods, though that could very well change with the unhealthy fast-food diets that have become increasingly common over recent decades. The suburban dream hit its peak during the ’50s, however, and is now starting to fizzle, with many young people choosing to live in cities for access to efficient transportation, jobs and culture.

Zero Traffic Noise in Cities as Transit Goes Underground

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The dream of the suburbs would be achieved with quiet, high-speed transportation that was virtually invisible at surface level, with “well-lighted and well-ventilated” underground railways in broad subways or tunnels, as well as monorails and elevated streets. Trains would take passengers from New York to San Francisco in a day and a night (imagine!). It’s easy to see why this seemed so readily achievable in the year 1900; the first underground railway in the world opened in London in 1863 and transportation grew more efficient by the year. People hadn’t yet been seduced by the status and freedom of individual automobiles.

We may have high-speed trains in much of the world (though sadly, still not in most of America), but car-free cities “free from all noises” are far from our current reality. However, at least one city may be able to achieve that ideal: ‘Great City’, a dense carless metropolis being built from scratch in a rural area outside Chengdu, China.

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Future Past 7 Wonders Predicted 100 Years Ago

A train station envisioned for the town of Sevastopol in Ukraine seems to be perpetually covered in clouds, topped with a light, helium-lifted structure inspired by airships. ‘Under the Cloud‘ consists of a passenger terminal building and a buoyant freeform canopy that hovers over the green roof of the main building.

The canopy shell has an aluminum frame with longitudinal and transverse trusses, the helium gas held inside a rigid framework in bags. With the guy lines securing it, it really does seem as if it could lift away into the sky at any moment.

Says designer Arthur Kupreychuk, “The supporting structure of the canopy is similar to the structure of an airship. The canopy strives upward by buoyancy forces, if its average density is less than the density of the atmosphere.”

What’s the purpose of this canopy? Judging by the designer’s other projects, it may just be for fun. Kupreychuk previously designed The Draft Parking Lot with the Car Service Station, another airship-inspired structure “conceived as the embodiment of the boundless creative thought of an architect, who often must try to restrict it and leave it unfulfilled.” This concept won the distinction of being “the most surreal project designed in ArchiCAD” in 2011.

Architects working with robots, firefighters equipped with artificial wings, electric learning machines and airships for everyone: this is the year 2000 – as imagined in 1910 – and it’s a vision of mechanical wonder decked out in Edwardian finery. French artist Villemard produced these illustrations predicting what life would be like at the dawn of the 21st century, and while some are hilarious, others are surprisingly accurate.

Firmly entrenched in the Industrial Age, the forward-thinking minds of the early 20th century were sure about one thing: machines would play an increasingly vital role in daily life well into the future. Reaching 90 years into the future, Villemard correctly anticipated technological advances like teleconferencing, radio news broadcasts and motorized roller-skates.

We may not have motorized hair-brushing machines, robot tailors or headsets that enable us to learn by osmosis, but we certainly rely on technology to perform more of our basic tasks than ever before. Villemard’s idea to use radium as a heat source would have proved disastrous, of course, but he wasn’t too far off – nuclear power was right around the corner.

When these images were created, suspended monorails, electric trains, blimps and bi-planes were state-of-the-art technology, seeming like the height of innovation. So it seemed only natural that, by the new millennium, we’d all be navigating the skies in personal aircraft, chased by police officers that resemble flying squirrels. And while floating airships are now largely a thing of the past, we’re still waiting on the flying cars we were promised by futurists so many decades ago.

It’s 500 feet across and can carry 700 times more weight than a heavy cargo helicopter – yet it’s based on technology that was developed in the early 20th century. An Australian firm could make Buckminster Fuller’s 90-year-old dream come true with ‘Skylifter‘, a disc-shaped airship that could be used to deliver entire buildings to remote locations.

The piloted dirigible is capable of carrying up to 150 tons as far as 1,240 miles. It doesn’t exactly do it at breakneck speed – the airship will top out at about 45 miles per hour. But speed isn’t the point. Skylifter could enable the transport and delivery of rural hospitals and disaster relief centers  in one piece, eliminating the need for multiple trips and on-location assembly.

Skylifter uses a disc-shaped aerostat rather than a cigar shape or sphere so that the airship is unaffected by wind direction but also easier to steer. The design also incorporates a new type of propeller with hydrofoil-shaped blades, and places the control pod well below the aerostat for added stability.

A remote-controlled 10-foot prototype nicknamed ‘Betty’ demonstrates how the full-size version will work. The company expects to complete a full-sized prototype within 3 years. It’s an interesting update on an idea that infamous inventor Buckminster Fuller had back in the 1920s that involved using zeppelins to transport prefab houses, and could even bring us back to that era’s dreams of entire communities in the sky: one imagined use for it is as airborne cruise ships.