Magazine accurately predicted the future 95 years ago

THESE illustrations were “seemingly farfetched” back then, but fast-forward a century and they have been vindicated.

IN APRIL 1923, Popular Science magazine predicted that we would one day be driving gyroscopic motorcycles — sitting high inside a massive wheel — that could reach speeds of 400mph (640kmh).

“You look back on that and you’re like, OK, maybe that was a little bit absurd when it came out. It’s still absurd now,” Popular Science’s deputy editor Corinne Iozzio told the New York Post. “But then you think about where we are with current technology, and you think about Segways and self-balancing motorcycles, and you see that the core principle of the idea hasn’t disappeared.”

Over the last century, Popular Science has regularly featured illustrations of seemingly farfetched inventions on its covers as a means of foretelling the future.

Some, like the 1921 prediction of a camera that can measure you for a new suit, came true. (Today, you can “try on” clothes in a virtual fitting room.)

Others, like the 1986 illustration of commercial “space planes” that would zip outside the atmosphere and back have yet to be developed.

A hundred year’s worth of these inventions are featured in the new book The Future Then: Fascinating Art And Predictions From 145 Years of Popular Science — out Tuesday, July 10.

Founded in 1872, Popular Science launched at a time when, Iozzio says, “technology and science were starting to bleed into everyday life a little bit more.”

AQUAPLANE June 1964: An ecstatic man rides the surf on his personal jet-drive aquaplane. DID IT HAPPEN? No. Well, a guy built one and put his plans in Popular Science, but this is one little piggy that never made it to market. One that did, however, was the invention of Norwegian-American Clayton Jacobson II, who is credited with creating the first ‘boatercycle’ in 1966. It tanked, but Jacobson’s next aquatic creation — released in 1973 for Kawasaki — had real (sea) legs. You know it as the jet ski.

PEDAL PLANE January 1971: A man pedals his way into flight. DID IT HAPPEN? Human-powered flight definitely, well, took off in the 1970s, with a $25,000 Kremer prize motivating daredevil designers everywhere to try their hand at a pedal-powered aircraft. The cover depicts the Puffin — a British-built human-powered plane that, in 1961, flew nearly 3000ft (900m), making it the most successful plane of its type at that time. The award ultimately went to American engineer Paul MacCready, whose pretty similar-looking Gossamer Condor completed the mandatory figure-eight flight course in 1977.

EARLY AIRBUS July 1922: A diorama of a multideck passenger jet airliner, as dreamt up by American WWI fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker. DID IT HAPPEN? Yes! And while some of the predicted features (such as the ability to take off from water) never came to fruition, this depiction of a multideck airliner is quite close to at least one in our present-day reality: the Airbus A380, which has two passenger decks and a third for cargo.

Forty-five years later, “the colour covers are where we really started to get a window into these fantastical visions of what life is and what life could be if we take science and make it popular,” she says.

Amazingly, more predictions than not came true: a 1922 illustration of a multideck passenger jet basically foresaw the Airbus A380, while the December 1970 cover imagines watches that could “keep track of moon phases, show the tides and make calculations”.

Today’s “watches have only gotten smarter since,” the book states.

Mobile phones were featured on the cover as early as 1973, and Popular Science imagined an early prototype of a video game way back in 1938.

But even the publication’s misses show a smart sense of analysing the times we live in and figuring out what comes next.

For example, while the 1931 prediction of “ski wings,” which would give skiers the ability to fly off mountains, was never widely adopted, it presaged the 1997 invention of wingsuits, so beloved by BASE-jumping adrenaline junkies today.

“It’s definitely an oops, but it’s a self-effacing oops,” Iozzio says of the magazine’s more misguided predictions. “What we always come back to is the core ambition of the thing that was on the cover.”

GYROCYCLE April 1923: Professor E.J. Christie’s giant gyroscopic wheel, predicted to hit up to 400mph. DID IT HAPPEN? Sadly, no. Powered by a 250-horsepower engine, this 14ft-tall (4m), 2400-pound (1000kg) vehicle had two gyroscopic wheels that were supposed to help it turn and maintain equilibrium. (Its inventor later committed suicide.)

PERSONAL SUBMARINE July 1966: A couple tours the deep in a mini bubble sub. DID IT HAPPEN? Yes, this illustration is actually amazingly close to what today’s personal subs, which are mainly manufactured for the luxury market and deep-sea research teams, look like. Haven’t seen one beachside? That’s because they cost around $1 million.

While some covers were depictions of early-stage inventions at the time, others were conceived from scratch.

“We don’t really have a formula,” Iozzio says, “but we think about the motivation of the thing. Is this craft or rocket [or whatever] seeking to solve a big problem, or to push through a barrier? What is the driving force behind it? We always reward motivation and ambition.”

This method often leads to spot-on futurecasting. While the first satellite was launched into space in 1957, Popular Science predicted it in 1949, posing the question, “Is US building a ‘New Moon?’”

At the time, satellites were still in the concept phase, advocated by scientists, and science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke. But there was no guarantee of their becoming real when the magazine featured them on the cover.

Now a quarterly magazine, Popular Science is still attempting to predict the future with recent covers exploring genetic engineering and human immortality.

Iozzio says the magazine’s current futurecasts largely focus on advances related to artificial intelligence, which she calls a “common thread” in forward-looking advancements today.

“Whether or not people realise it, artificial intelligence is something we’re already interacting with on a daily basis,” she says.

Voting MACHINES November 1920: A voting machine that ‘cannot be manipulated’ DID IT HAPPEN? Kind of. In this issue, the magazine envisioned a voting machine that would ‘ensure honest elections’. And while voting machines eventually went electronic and became increasingly sophisticated over time, the Popular Science of the 1920s just couldn’t have anticipated the concept of computer hackers. Simpler times.

“There’s an artificial intelligence in Google Maps, and now that things like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant are becoming more prevalent, we’re starting to have voice-to-voice interaction with artificial intelligence. With things like self-driving cars, the way we’re going to come to trust the interconnectivity and intelligence of our devices is going to continue to inform everything we see going forward.”

The magazine’s editors hope readers will see their predictions not just as indications of a possible future, but as a springboard for conversation.

“I want readers to absorb these as a source of inspiration,” Iozzio says, “as a way to say that we’re always thinking forward. We’re thinking creatively and scientifically about the problems we’re facing and about ways we can address those problems from a practical standpoint and in a sci-fi future — how to think way outside the box. Very often, what ends up happening through the course of history is that we land somewhere in the middle.”

— All captions excerpted from “The Future Then: Fascinating Art And Predictions From 145 Years Of Popular Science”.

SUNPORT January 1961: A nuclear family enjoys the warmth of a DIY air-bubble sunport. DID IT HAPPEN? Definitely. These giant bubble sunrooms — essentially inflatable tentlike structures that keep the heat in and the bugs and/or weather out — are still around. You can either buy one or, as Pennsylvania man Ernest Muehlmatt did, make your own, though it’ll run you more than $50 these days. They’re most often used over swimming pools or gardens in the winter.

This originally appeared on the New York Post and is reproduced with permission.