When asked what the world would look like in 200 years time, some Cambridge scientists of 1923 said that children will be grown in laboratories and not in their mother’s womb.
“The citizen of the future may quite possibly start life in a laboratory test-tube, be reared in a specially prepared serum and at the proper time be put on a diet of artificially created milk,” reads an article published in the Warsaw Daily Times in August that year.
It goes on to say that “Not only will the body grow in the laboratory, but also the character, skills and functions will be determined by cleverly made incisions, excisions, injections and so on.”
#2 Interior Of Casa Rosada Of Buenos Aires, 1923
Another somewhat amusing prediction was that humans would consume their food in capsule form. English writer, Walter Lionel George penned a full front-page article in The New York Herald in 1922 called “What the World Will Be Like in a Hundred Years."
George believed that people would continue to eat "corned beef, hash, and pumpkin," but most of the meal would be synthetic. All the ingredients would be contained in pills.
#4 Military School Cadets Marching Down Parodos Street, 1920, Kaunas, Lithuania
#6 King William Street, Adelaide, South Australia 1923
The future of food was a big talking point in the 1920s. A 1927 article in The Grape Belt noted that American scientists found that the world’s population would increase so significantly that there would not be enough food to go around.
“Cheap, synthetic food is a dream or a nightmare, depending on how you feel about the population,” they said. Although it's unclear if they had a vision of drive-throughs and fast food chains taking over cities around the globe.
#7 St. Faith's Church 1900 – 1920 , New Zealand, Bay Of Plenty
George, quite ironically, saw a world free of pollution. “Through the disappearance of coal in all places where electricity is not made there will be no more smoke, perhaps not even that of tobacco,” he predicted. And he wasn't the only one...
“The smoke and the dust of our cities will be gone forever,” reads an article published in 1908 in the Sunday Vindicator, adding that “Coal will be superseded by electricity driven from natural forces such as the tide and the sun.”
#12 Loaded Freight Barge Passing The Russian Consulate, Huangpu, Shanghai, 1919
George also believed that by 2022, there would be a limit on how many children a family can have. He also, quite rightly, stated the following: “their status as heads of the household will change significantly, when women develop a career and enter the labor market.”
“Marriage will still exist much as it is today," he added. "For mankind has an inveterate taste for this institution, but divorce will probably be as easy everywhere.”
#14 1921 , France, Metropolitan France, Île-De-France, Paris, 6th Arrondissement (Luxembourg), Notre-Dame-Des-Champs
#19 View Of Nihonbashi Bridge With Boats Underneath 1911 – 1920 , Japan, Tokyo
#20 Main Building, Armour Institute Of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, CA 1920s
