18 Futuristic Machines Imagined In 1940

I have long been wondering if we, humanity, have gotten better at predicting the future thanks to all the experience we have gained through the millions of years we’ve existed. I mean, in just the last hundred years or so we have gone from primitive technology to advanced microchip technology, and while considering that 100 years is only a fraction of the time we have been on this earth, it’s quite an extraordinary feat. Just 70 years ago we still had a lot of imagination, but we didn’t really predict it thoroughly it seems. We tended to look into the future and pull back things that we still haven’t been able to achieve. Maybe it was the positivity or longing for the future that kept us dreaming up insane, yet plausible machines back then.

A series of images, or propaganda images rather, have surfaced lately thanks to Retronaut. They contain 18 machines that a few brilliant minds back in the ’40s thought we would see in a foreseeable future. They are nothing less than fantastic if you ask me. Sure, they are a little bit out there, but still most of them have been realized in one way or another. Maybe they haven’t become the pinnacle of successful inventions, but they have still been incorporated into our daily lives in one way or another, depending on what profession and lifestyle you have.

These “posters” come from the innovation design company Bohn which specialized in concepts of the future. Maybe it was a way to help the development and the imaginations of that particular era’s innovators, or perhaps it was just a way to make the future seem a little bit more bright and exciting. I am stunned by the scale of all of these “inventions,” and it seems even back then the concept and perception of things was that “bigger is better.” However, time has proven that we went in the total opposite direction, and now we continuously try to make things smaller. Life is truly hard to predict sometimes, right?

Via: [UFunk – French]