We’re used to self-styled futurologists getting their predictions hopelessly wrong, so it’s impressive to come across this, from architect Sir Aston Webb. Made in 1914, Sir Aston imagined taking a journey a century into the future, to 2014.
I asked why everything looked so bright and clean, and my companion said that was because they had done away with the smoke and only used smokeless fuel materials now.
In a bird’s-eye view I obtained of London, I noticed that, besides the railway tracks out of London, there were great arterial roads stretching out in all ways. They were 120 feet wide, and there were two divisions – one for slow moving traffic and one for swift traffic. The tramways had been done away with, and the people of the day had wireless telegraphy, wireless telephones, and wireless electric light.
There was a belt of green around London, a sylvan glade, formed out of various town planning schemes. My companion told me that all these things were arranged now by the Ministry of Art, who had such matters referred to them.
OK, so no Ministry of Art but predicting a smoke-free city, motorways, wireless communications, mobile phones and the Green Belt from 1914 is pretty good going.
Think you can do better? Give it a go – though we’ll have to wait a century to find out.
This is the first in a new weekly series of of history-themed posts tagged “The way we were” – hopefully you’ll find some of them interesting.
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