April 24, 2007

"An amazing collection of postcards from the dawn of the twentieth century that depict what life would be like in the year 2000" This collection of German postcards were originally give-aways in Hildebrands chocolates in 1900 -- they depict the world as it would be in 2000. Included are a water-unicycle, slidewalks, locomotives pulling houses, personal airplanes, weather control systems, amphibious railways, police X-rays for seeing through walls, and, of course, zeppelins. Beautiful artwork, too

I know retro-futurology is kind of a recurring theme here and I'm posting in great danger of a dupe, but this was too nifty to pass up. The whole blog is stuffed with historical... future?
Via

posted by FiftyPoints 17 years ago
  • I want to see the movie based on these images!
  • It's the future now, where's my flying... bat thing?
  • Yay, Zeppelins! *urges 50Pts to read "The Gernsback Continuum," a short story by William Gibson*
  • I like how the Weather Control Machine is labelled "cocoa," thus ensuring that the city is going to have scalding hot chocolate spewed all over its denizens!
  • Mh, the X-Ray Surveillance Machine is ready to premiere in many airports. One out of 12 ain't bad. The Difference Engine is another W. Gibson novel (along with Bruce Sterling) about an alternate 'steampunk' reality, really worth reading.
  • What about the summer holidays at the north pole? Only a few years off.
  • Didja see this post on ThatOtherFilter?
  • Man, I want Zeppelins! This future/present sucks. *sulk* (says the guy with detailed 1:200 models of D-LZ127 Graf Zeppelin and D-LZ129 Hindenburg hanging over his desk)
  • Hawthorne, I've seen that article, but not in text, I read a scan of the original page. interesting how many of those were pretty accurate, though
  • Hawthorne, I've seen that article, but not in text, I read a scan of the original page. interesting how many of those were pretty accurate, though
  • Oh stab me with a spoon.
  • I like how the artists thought all of the technology would change in 100 years, but none of the fashion, despite the fact that fashion had changed all throughout the previous century. Maybe they wouldn't have imagined that women would wear trousers for everyday (since they never had in European/western culture), but puff sleeves? They were out of fashion in just ten years! Both men's and women's clothes changed significantly throughout the ninteenth century; the twentieth century changes were more radical, but from regency to late Victorian is still pretty dramatic. That just shows lazy thinking (and one which a lot of science fiction is prone to). Fashion is just as important as technology - it reflects society.
  • Well, we KINDA have moving-pavement thingies - those big conveyor belts you can get on at the airport. And we may not have personal zeppelins, but some folk have personal ultra-light planes and shit.
  • Oh, an' the televised ourdoor braodcastin' thingamajigger. And we move houses, 'cept with trucks instead of trains.
  • I want a train/ocean liner.
  • And with webcams, everybody is/can be a broadcaster now.