Predicting the Year 2000 in 1900

Following up form my posts on H.G. Wells predictive abilities (here and here), the Washington Post has an interesting article on a series of artworks from 1900 depicting what the artists thought life might be like in the year 2000, entitled rather unimaginatively What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like.

The pictures are, of course, interesting not only for what they got correct, but also for what they got wrong and why.

Many of the pictures show increased mechanization, reflecting the rise and rise of mechanization at the time. Many were applied to the service industries, such as what the Washington Post describes as "a precursor to the new robot vacuum, the iRobot Roomba vacuum" in the diagram to the left.

To an economist, the main thing that is surprising about this picture is that the mechanized vacuum operates alongside a maid, as opposed to having replaced the maid. The development of labor saving machines for use in home production is probably one of the most transformative set of innovations of the 20th Century and would appear to have played a large role in the rise of women working outside of the home.

Not all of the envisaged mechanized service sector inventions have come to pass. The next picture shows a mechanized barbershop. The fact that this has not occurred in practice may reflect the fact that certain services need to be more precisely individually tailored than others.

We might be getting closer to the day when we have, as shown in the next picture, almost fully automated and almost instantaneous production of tailored clothing. Certainly, taking advantage of improved telecommunications, people today can take advantage of tailoring that is offshored to low labor cost countries.

The mechanization of the agricultural sector is also commonly depicted. This was a very accurate prediction, although the specific details were a little off.

We certainly see today the mechanized harvesting of crops, depicted in the next picture. The incubation of chickens is also, I think, now regularly mechanized, although it does not seem to work as instantaneously as depicted in the following picture.


The second last picture is of something that might reasonably regarded as an early conception of a mobile home. Whether this was viewed as a permanent home for the very rich, or a summer fancy for the middle classes is not clear. But it clearly tapped into the increased interest and affordability of travel at the time.

Lastly, a surprising number of the images contain rather fanciful depictions of recreational activities underwater, as shown in the last picture of an underwater croquet game. At first glance this may seem surprising. But it makes a lot of sense once it is noted that France played a central role in the development of diving as both a professional activity and as a hobby. For example, the French engineers Auguste Denayrouze and Benoît Rouquayrol invented the under water regulator in 1864.

In the picture, the people seem to be using self contained underwater breathing apparatus. As there are no bubbles depicted, it looks like a closed circuit system, perhaps along the lines of that built by the Englishman Henry Fleuss in 1878. The first open-circuit scuba system was not devised until 1925 (by the Frenchman Yves Le Prieur).