It is always interesting to imagine what the civilization of the future will be like. We saw this a lot in the cinema of the 70s and 80s, in works such as ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Robocop’, which imagined a future full of cyborgs and flying cars. Yes, we are now closer to both ‘advanced’ humans and the long-awaited flying cars, but what they didn’t dream of was something like the internet.

This is because it is much easier to imagine a future with advanced elements of today or by solving a problem of the time. For example, if they had cars in the 70s, those cars would be flying 30 years later. Something similar happened in France in 1899. Toy manufacturer Armand Gervais commissioned Jean-Marc Côté and other artists to create a series of illustrated cards for the world exhibition in Paris in 1900.

In these works, artists had to imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. It is quite intriguing to see the designs of their works, the problems they wanted to solve of the period they lived in, and their mentality. Some designs were quite close to reality. Others didn’t even give one.but they are really interesting because they allow us to see the logic of time and the known solutions that they eventually applied to the problems, tasks and daily life of their time.

In some cases it may seem to us that they were shortsighted because they did not invent something like computers and all designs are inherently linked to the machines of both their time and fashion, but they are still a great example of the paleo-future.

Mobility and… electric train

The cars of 1899 were greatly surpassed. Motor vehicles have existed for several years, and even though they weren’t for personal use by the masses, they existed… they existed. Mass production began in 1908 with Henry Ford’s assembly line and the Ford T, but the cars did not attract as much attention. At least to these French artists.

What they wanted was both water and air buses. At the time, commercial flights were nothing more than a fantasy (the Wright brothers would not make the first powered flight until 1903, and flights by passenger airliners were unimaginable). The closest things they had were airships and submarines.

What have you done? Create a boat with two large bags and an underwater bus that can travel both in the air and at sea. Where to go? We will see later, because underwater life was something they were passionate about.

Also strange is the electric train with the Paris-Beijing route (nothing, just more than 8,000 kilometers of straight line). Except for the rocket-like cabin, It’s remarkable that it doesn’t seem to have wheels.but as we can see in magnetic levitation maglev it is a magnetized system. We can also see personal and electric skates. We’re familiar with electric scooters, electric skateboards, and even sandals for walking 250% faster.

Speech to text system, voice notes and video calls

Did they remove something like a smartphone from the factory? Actually… no, actually, but these French artists had the telephone, the cinematograph, the phonograph and the gramophone that the Lumière brothers had invented a few years earlier. They were pretty new inventions and looked great on these futuristic cards. Their combination is also magical.

In the designs, we can see that on the first card a person receives a message one by one to listen to on their gramophone (like WhatsApp voice memos, but much less instantaneous and expensive), while news is received on the radio (something that is already being prepared). ) on the second card, a man dictating a message to a machine that appears to convert to text in the third photo, and… a video calling system in the fourth photo?

It seems that the image of a person is projected onto the screen through a projector, the man listens to the gramophone and speaks at the same time. It is interesting that this process requires an operator to control the machine. It really couldn’t have been more complicated, but it’s a striking thing to imagine something like a video call in the media of the time.

Heavy-duty tasks with remote control

The two segments that continued to undertake manual tasks were the rural sector and agriculture. Even today, with all the advances we have, these are very physical jobs, so it makes sense that in 1899 they were dreaming of a future where everything was automated.

In some cases they were not at fault, such as the remotely controlled combine harvester (we have to manage ours from the inside, but hey, it’s the same), and something more fanciful is the board that shows an operator inside the cab controlling a complex robotic system. He is building a house.

It is the arms and not just the electric winch that lays the brick or chisel part of the facade. A GPS-controlled robotic lawnmower like the Segway Navimow was unimaginable, but it’s a big deal.

Roomba, robot hairdresser and 3D printer

And bricklayers aren’t the only robots. We can also see other ideas in these cards, such as: robot-hairdresser or robot-barber, which is not actually something we have nowBut hey, they have shavers. What’s interesting is that they invented the robot vacuum cleaner about a century before it came into existence, and it became popular with a companion robot that appeared to be connected to a cable or a human-controlled remote control.

It’s funny because it has both a brush and a little scoop that collects dirt, but I don’t really see that wand as a remote control. And something very ingenious is the machine that takes the measurements to make a suit and transfers the information to a machine that turns out the finished garment. It’s like an old version of a 3D printer.

strange things

Now, while all the cards are extremely creative, there are others that make us think “why?” For example, in the top collection A group playing cricket underwater, something that makes no sense Because they’re not playing with gravity, they’re just… playing cricket on the seabed. We also have a postman delivering mail via a flying vehicle in a rural area; We can compare this to drones delivering packages.

And the bottom two cards cannot be classified. In the first we see a machine that “processes” the books chosen by the teacher and the information reaches the students. We no longer know if these are headphones and are we talking about audiobooks or does it sound straight like in ‘The Matrix’, with all the information being chewed into the students’ minds? And the underwater cafe scene is crazy. First of all, why do they have roofs? The second is that they cannot take off their diving suits.

In any case, this prophetic vision had little chance. Gervais began producing some card games in 1899 but died during production. The project remained in limbo and the cards were stored in the basement. Gervais’s archive was purchased, but the box of cards remained secret, and they did not see the light of day again until 75 years later, when Canadian writer Christopher Hyde found them and lent them to Isaac Asimov. These were published in 1986 in the book ‘Days to Come: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000’, co-authored by Jean-Marc Côté.

There are many more cards you can apply for on Gallica, the website of the National Library of France. There are many more everyday scenes featuring underwater activities (both fun and hunting), a few cards showing flying cars, some…useless inventions, and interesting things that look like a chick incubator. What’s unique, beyond the craziness of some creations, If we put ourselves in the minds of the artists of 1899, their logic does not disappear. We can also see similarities with existing devices and techniques.

More information and images | National Library of France

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