9 eerily accurate predictions for the year 2000 from Victorian-era paintings
PREDICTION: This artist thought blazes would be tackled by firemen in the sky.
REALITY: Their predictions weren't far off. Dubai bought 20 jetpacks for its firefighters and first-responders in 2015. They can fly as high as 3,000 feet high and can reach speeds of up to 45 mph.
PREDICTION: They called it "correspondence cinema."
REALITY: We call it FaceTime.
PREDICTION: Nobody has ever enjoyed housework. Even in the 1900s they were dreaming of a day when robots could do it for them.
REALITY: Luckily, their dreams came true. Roomba, an automated vacuum cleaner, was released in 2002, just two years after the artist had predicted. It's also much more compact than the artist's creation.
PREDICTION: Was this illustration a precursor to the motor home?
REALITY: Unfortunately it isn't quite as quaint as the artist had anticipated. But the prediction of "a house rolling through the countryside" was just about accurate.
PREDICTION: This illustration is called "intensive breeding," and although the artist envisioned a much more pleasant looking future for animals, where a machine turned eggs into chicks, the concept was somewhat accurate.
REALITY: When the illustration was drawn just over 100 years ago, the global population was 1.6 billion. Farming methods have since adapted to cater to the demand of more than 7 billion people worldwide, and pictured below is what we call "intensive breeding" nowadays.
PREDICTION: Victorians really wanted to be able to ride through the streets on motorised "auto rollers."
REALITY: This is what we ended up with — the hoverboard.
PREDICTION: This illustration imagines a "sentinel," or a soldier, patrolling from the sky in what looks like a helicopter.
REALITY: This artist made two accurate predictions. The invention of helicopters and the use of them in law enforcement.
PREDICTION: Farming is no easy task. In 1900, this artist predicted the use of automated machinery to help make life easier in the year 2000.
REALITY: The prediction was spot on. Many farmers now rely on self-driving tractors to do the hard work for them.
PREDICTION: Before the invention of mechanised construction, building work was exhausting, so it's no wonder this artist hoped for the whole process to be automated.
REALITY: Now, it's hard to imagine a building project without machines onsite to help.
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