Intriguing Illustrations from 1899 Show What People of the Past Thought the Year 2000 Would Look Like

What do you imagine the world will look like in 100 years? Contemporary movies and TV shows will likely influence your vision of the future. Thanks to sci-fi and cyberpunk classics like Bladerunner, Akira, and The Matrix, anyone in the modern day might imagine the future to dominated by artificial intelligence and filled with grimy and neon cityscapes. That might not actually be too far off from what the future holds, honestly. However, it's hard to imagine anything different that deviates from the pop culture vision.

In these illustrations below by Jean-Marc Côté, we see what people from the year 1899 imagined the year 2000 would look like. It's fascinating stuff; while they certainly guessed much of the tech that exists in the modern world, the illustrations could never have predicted the fashions or aesthetics of this age. Furthermore, there are some things nowadays that they never would have been able to even imagine– such as computers, the concept of AI, or soft contact lenses.

01
At School

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02
Dictating his mail

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03
Radium heating

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04
A modern Tailor

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05
Long-distance aeronautics

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06
A Game of underwater Croquet (why though?)

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07
On board a submarine liner

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08
A Hydroplane

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09
An Oceanian Landscape

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10
Ok, what's with living underwater?

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11
Underwater Yachting

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12
A Whale Bus

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It is really fascinating to me that people of the past – or at least this illutrator – thought that we future humans would be spending so much time hanging out under the sea. Despite all technological advances, our own oceans remain quite mysterious due to their sheer size as well as the complexities of moving in water and dealing with water pressure.
13
Opera Avenue

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14
Electrical Construction Site

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15
Advanced Helicopter Sentry

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16
The Flying Fire Brigade

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17
The Paris-Beijing electric train

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18
Auto-Skates

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19
The Barber's New Machine

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20
Cinema-Phono-Telegraphic Correspondence

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21
Cycling Scouts

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22
A very busy farmer

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While the aesthetics of the technology aren't quite right, the people of the past were right in that we would want to move towards automation.
23
Madam at her Toilet

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24
Flying deliveries

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25
Flying cars

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26
Automatic orchestra

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27
The Hunt for Microbes

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28
Flying Tennis

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29
A Holiday Home on Wheels

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30
An electric scrubber

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31
Intensive breeding

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32
An Astronomer

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33
Future Bakery

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