The Technotopia of 2000 (1962)

In 1962 the French weekly l'Express postulated about a technologically advanced utopia in the year 2000.

By the year 2000 all food will be completely synthetic. Agriculture and fisheries will have become superfluous. The world's population will by then have increased fourfold but will have stabilized. Sea water and ordinary rocks will yield all the necessary metals. Disease, as well as famine, will have been eliminated; and universal hygienic inspection and control will have been introduced. The problems of energy production will by then be completely resolved.

From the essay Food - the great challenge of this crucial century by Georg Borgstrom in the 1975 book Notes for the Future: An Alterative History of the Past Decade.

See also:
Our Friend the Atom (Book, 1956)
Closer Than We Think! Fat Plants and Meat Beets (1958)
Closer Than We Think! Hydrofungal Farming (1962)
Man's Future Beneath the Sea (1968)
That 60's Food of the Future
Solar Power of 1999 (1956)
Hubert H. Humphrey's Year 2000 (1967)

More French Prints of the Year 2000 (1900)

Hunting and Destroying Microbes

The website Television History has five more French prints which imagine the year 2000. The site claims that 50 such cards, each illustrating different wonders of a hundred years hence, were produced for the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Flying Tennis

Projecting Telescope

Underwater Croquet

Flying Buses


See also:
French Prints Show Year 2000 (circa 1910)
Gardens of Glowing Electrical Flowers (1900)
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Stepped Platform Railway (1890)
Moving Sidewalk (1900)
Moving Sidewalk Mechanics (1900)
Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)

Extraordinary Adventures of Saturnino Farandola (1914)

This movie poster for the 1914 film L'Avventure Straordinarissime di Saturnino Farandola (The Extraordinary Adventures of Saturnino Farandola) was drawn by Albert Robida. This version of the (paleo)future appears to involve riding sea creatures while shooting magical underwater firearms.

See also:
Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)
Evening Fashions of the Year 1952 (1883)
Undersea Cities (1954)
Sealab 1994 (1973)
Man's Future Beneath the Sea (1968)

French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

Flying FiremenThe National Library of France (BnF) has an amazing collection of prints from 1910 which depict life in the year 2000. They are credited to Villemard.

There's speculation that they were included with "foodstuffs" of the era, much like the German postcards we looked at back in April.

Car ShoesThe BarberThe Avenue of the OperaA Curiosity
I wonder if the "curiosity" referred to is the horse as an uncommon means of transportation, or the extinction of all animals as referenced in the 1900 Ladies' Home Journal article we looked at a while back.The Electric Train From Paris to BeijingA RescueSpeak to the Caretaker
This image clearly takes its inspiration from another French futurist, Albert Robida, and his book The Twentieth Century.Sentinel Advanced in the HelicopterCyclist ScoutsPhonographic MessageOne For the RoadLady In Her BathroomHeating With RadiumHearing The NewspaperCorrespondence CinemaCars of WarBuilding SiteAt SchoolA Festival of FlowersA Chemical Dinner
It's amazing how long the idea of synthetic food has been with us. Before starting this blog I had assumed that the idea started with the Jetsons.Airship On The Long CourseThe TailorFlying Police

See also:
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Evening Fashions of the Year 1952 (1883)
The Air Ship: A Musical Farce Comedy (1898)
Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)
Collier's Illustrated Future of 2001 (1901)
Predictions of a 14-Year-Old (Milwaukee Excelsior, 1901)
No One Will Walk - All Will Have Wheels (Brown County Democrat, 1900)
The Next Hundred Years (Milwaukee Herold und Seebote, 1901)
What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years (Ladies Home Journal, 1900)
Flying Machines (circa 1885)

Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)

This lithograph from 1882 depicts the fanciful world of 2000; flying buses, towering restaurants, and of course, 1880's French attire. Albert Robida is less well-known than Jules Verne but contributed just as much to the collective imagination through his amazing illustrations.

If you speak French I recommend picking up the Robida book La vie électrique. For the record, I don't speak French. Much like a child, I got it for the pictures.

(UPDATE: Some very good questions have been raised about the date of production for this lithograph. The year 1882 came from a Library of Congress source. La Vie Electrique (published 1892) contains structures that look similar to the Eiffel Tower but are in fact lighthouses. However, I am definitely open to the idea that "circa 1900" would be a more appropriate label.)







See also:
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Collier's Illustrated Future of 2001 (1901)
Predictions of a 14-Year-Old (Milwaukee Excelsior, 1901)
The Next Hundred Years (Milwaukee Herold und Seebote, 1901)
What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years (Ladies Home Journal, 1900)

Feminine Beauty (New York Times, 1909)

"Most interesting of [Jules Bois's] predictions, perhaps, is that the present ideal of feminine beauty will have ceased to be held by the majority of the Caucasian race. Physical weakness, extreme delicacy of physiognomy, and acquiescence in a mere secondary position in the social organization will have given palce to a type in which beauty and muscular development will be combined."

"Strange to say, the Paris press has not yet pointed its arrows of ridicule at the prophet. Perhaps it is because the average Frenchman has no deep-seated objection to woman doing a large share of the world's work, such as the American man appears to have."

If you have a TimeSelect subscription you can read the entire article here.

See also:
A Hundred Years From Now. (New York Times, 1909) 14 March 2007