How did our grandfathers imaging our present? Robert Langkjær-Bain of Fivemedia has an excellent article with some (often hilarious) illustrations answering that very question.

Flying Cars

With AirCar completing its first flight on June 28th, 2021, maybe we’re finally approaching the realization of that old dream: a flying personal means of transportation:

However, we’re already 11 years behind, if this postcard from 1882 is to be believed. Showing the skies above Paris in the year 2000, it imagines a world where everyone’s flying… even though the means of transportation seem rather unusual:

Even postmen use a flying contraption to deliver the post in this 1899 illustration of a flying postman by French artist Jean-Marc Côté:

Of course, the flying postman would presumably be delivering junk mail, since all important documents are now shared by email – a development not even the wildest 19th-century imagination could have…