These Vintage Ideas of the Future Were Actually Pretty Impressive

These Vintage Ideas of the Future Were Actually Pretty Impressive

Shannon Quinn - December 15, 2022

The art of Futurism began when industry was quickly moving humanity forward with progress. Machinery helped productivity during the industrial revolution and people began to imagine how new inventions could possibly make the future better. This created the idea of a future utopia, which was depicted by many artists throughout history. This sparked people’s imaginations, and contributed to the creation of science fiction. Here at History Collection, we have compiled some of the most interesting images of Retrofuturism.

These Vintage Ideas of the Future Were Actually Pretty Impressive
A retrofuturistic illustration of women video chatting with their kids. Credit: Rare Historical Photos

A Retro Idea of Video Chat From 1930

In this vintage artwork, we see two women calling their children from futuristic devices. There is a box that the woman is holding over her shoulder, which is attached by a wire to the mouthpiece and screen. She’s also wearing wired headphones. This isn’t too far off from the fact that we can now FaceTime our friends and family from our smartphones. However, they had no way of predicting that all of the mechanism would be condensed into such a small handheld device. And, of course, the concept of wireless BlueTooth headphones like AirPods would have seemed like pure sorcery.

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