Intriguing Illustrations from 1899 Show What People of the Past Thought the Year 2000 Would Look Like

Ely Bulnes • Writer and Editor

May 13, 2025 11:00 PM EDT

What do you imagine the world will look like in 100 years? Contemporary movies and TV shows will likely influence your vision of the future. Thanks to sci-fi and cyberpunk classics like Bladerunner, Akira, and The Matrix, anyone in the modern day might imagine the future to dominated by artificial intelligence and filled with grimy and neon cityscapes. That might not actually be too far off from what the future holds, honestly. However, it's hard to imagine anything different that deviates from the pop culture vision.

In these illustrations below by Jean-Marc Côté, we see what people from the year 1899 imagined the year 2000 would look like. It's fascinating stuff; while they certainly guessed much of the tech that exists in the modern world, the illustrations could never have predicted the fashions or aesthetics of this age. Furthermore, there are some things nowadays that they never would have been able to even imagine– such as computers, the concept of AI, or soft contact lenses.

01
At School

via The Public Domain Review
02
Dictating his mail

via The Public Domain Review
03
Radium heating

via The Public Domain Review
04
A modern Tailor

via The Public Domain Review
05
Long-distance aeronautics

via The Public Domain Review
06
A Game of underwater Croquet (why though?)

via The Public Domain Review
07
On board a submarine liner

via The Public Domain Review
08
A Hydroplane

via The Public Domain Review
09
An Oceanian Landscape

via The Public Domain Review
10
Ok, what's with living underwater?

via The Public Domain Review
11
Underwater Yachting

via The Public Domain Review
12
A Whale Bus

via The Public Domain Review
It is really fascinating to me that people of the past – or at least this illutrator – thought that we future humans would be spending so much time hanging out under the sea. Despite all technological advances, our own oceans remain quite mysterious due to their sheer size as well as the complexities of moving in water and dealing with water pressure.
13
Opera Avenue

via The Public Domain Review
14
Electrical Construction Site

via The Public Domain Review
15
Advanced Helicopter Sentry

via The Public Domain Review
16
The Flying Fire Brigade

via The Public Domain Review
17
The Paris-Beijing electric train

via The Public Domain Review
18
Auto-Skates

via The Public Domain Review
19
The Barber's New Machine

via The Public Domain Review
20
Cinema-Phono-Telegraphic Correspondence

via The Public Domain Review
21
Cycling Scouts

via The Public Domain Review
22
A very busy farmer

via The Public Domain Review
While the aesthetics of the technology aren't quite right, the people of the past were right in that we would want to move towards automation.
23
Madam at her Toilet

via The Public Domain Review
24
Flying deliveries

via The Public Domain Review
25
Flying cars

via The Public Domain Review
26
Automatic orchestra

via The Public Domain Review
27
The Hunt for Microbes

via The Public Domain Review
28
Flying Tennis

via The Public Domain Review
29
A Holiday Home on Wheels

via The Public Domain Review
30
An electric scrubber

via The Public Domain Review
31
Intensive breeding

via The Public Domain Review
32
An Astronomer

via The Public Domain Review
33
Future Bakery

via The Public Domain Review