Here are some very nice images of artists’ imaginations about the future. Since these imaginations are from around 1900, their relative future is, well, now.

So I can actually compare the artistic fancies with what the future turned out to be once it arrived. Here we go:

An image I really like, the arctic Zeppelin air train:

and today, proper airfields in the arctic (apparently, noone thought of feasible heavier than air flying machines some 120 years ago… ):

One particular quaint one, the “Luftpolizist”, your friendly neighbourhood policeman complete with wings:

 unfortunately, nothing remotely as nice has come to pass, instead we have cops in choppers:

And the final and most acurate one (judging from the style of the image I’d say it was drawn sometime around 1930), the mobile phone:

If you do not know what they turned out to be like today, where exactly do you live?

Of course, there are more images like that floating around the ætherweb, I may or might post another entry on that subject some day.