"You can't stop the future, you can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret...is to press play." - "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher.
People in the 1960s were just like us. We love contemplating what the future holds for us or how our world would be another 20 years from today.
Years ago, they had a vision. They thought by the time the next millennium, or even a decade for that matter, came - life will have changed in ways only imagination could conspire.
Gizmodo's PaleoFuture recently laid hands on a January 3, 1960 feature of the "American Weekly" magazine where people imagined how life would be 10 years from then. While the issue had future life perspective on every aspect of life, we sieved through it to find what they thought homes and cities would look like.
Considering "The Jetsons" came out in the sixties, people's views of the cities were not very different from what we saw on the show. They thought houses would have an automated color-changing roof that will transform to a lighter color in the summer and a darker color in the winter to regulate heat inside.
They also thought that the traditional nails and hammer would go extinct to be replaced with super-glue, a drop of which could be enough to apparently hold up "a car with four passengers"
Another old video of the 1920s' version of a futuristic world showed that cities would have fancy high-rise bridges and cars would fly and trains would run at various levels above the ground.
Well, some of that turned out to be true. We do have the subways and the over-bridge trains, but cars don't fly yet. People also thought flights would carry about 600 passengers and be fitted with lounges and reading rooms. While the number of passengers still remains unachieved, Etihad Airlines managed to fit in a whole apartment in an airplane!
The "House of the Future (1957)" got it right almost entirely. Complete with space-saving cabinetry, lights, air conditioning and temperature control, use of plastic and fibers and even the electronic trimmer and toothbrush.
Check out the video below to see how the past thought the future would be:
The House of Tomorrow
What the Future Will Look Like
