We may never have our flying elevator car , but there are some things that science fiction has forecast accurately . Here are some futuristic engineering that started as fiction and are now part of the existent worldly concern .
Tablets
Arthur C. Clarke ’s NewsPad , from the 2001 : Space Odyssey , 1968 :
E-book readers
Opton from Return from the Stars , by Stanislaw Lem in 1961 :
I spent the afternoon in a bookstall . There were no book in it . None had been printed for nearly half a century . And how I have looked forward to them , after the micro moving picture that made up the depository library of the Prometheus ! No such fortune . No longer was it possible to shop among shelves , to consider bulk in hand , to feel their heft , the promise of ponderous reading . The bookstall resemble , instead , an electronic laboratory . The books were crystals with memorialise content . They can be read the assistance of an opton , which was exchangeable to a book but had only one page between the natural covering . At a touch , sequent pageboy of the textual matter appear on it . But optons were little used , the sales - automaton told me . The public preferent lectons – like lectons read out loud , they could be set to any vox , pacing , and modulation . Only scientific publications having a very circumscribed distribution were still printed , on a plastic impersonation newspaper . Thus all my purchase fitted into one pocket , though there must have been almost three hundred title . My handful of crystal corn whiskey – my book .
( viaAmazon )
Plastic-eating bacteria became real in 2009
From The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton , 1969 :
– The organism … mutate to a noninfectious shape . And perhaps it is still mutate . Now it is no longer forthwith harmful to man , but it rust rubber gasket .
– The aeroplane .
Hall nodded .
– internal guardsmen could be on the ground , and not be harm . But the pilot had his aircraft destroyed because the charge plate was dissolved before his eyes .
A 16 - yr - former boy named Daniel Burd have discovered a credit card - consuming microorganism and introduced it at the Canada - Wide Science Fair in Ottawa in May 2009 , harmonise to theMother Nature connection ( MNN ) .
( via Vladimir Melnik / Shutterstock )
Transparent Smartphone Prototype, Polytron Technologies, 2013
lucid flat display from affair To Come ( 1936 ) , write by H. G. Wells ( ground on The Shape of Things to Come , 1933 ) and direct by William Cameron Menzies :
( viadesignboom )
A networked personal assistant with a speech recognition engine: introduced to iPhone users as “Siri” on 4 December 2024
The Joymaker from The Age of The Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl in 1965 :
“ Self - scheduling ” means that the programmed software let in function for translate most normal mutant of voice , idiom , accent , and other variable modalities into a computer - oriented sim - script and thence into the mathematical expressions on which the information processing system operate . As long as your personal joymaker is within reception ambit of your spokesperson , you may pass along via other share - time transponder if you care . ”
Pohl himself made the adopt statement in the afterword about the novel ’s world :
“ I do not really think it will be that longsighted . Not five C . Perhaps not even five decades . ”
( viaMisen 23 , cover art by Bruce Pennington )
Spray-On Clothes, 2000, by Fabrician Ltd.
predict in Return from the Stars , by Stanislaw Lem , 1961 :
“ With the apparel I had no hazard . Of what I knew , almost nothing exist . At any rate , I discovered the secret of those cryptic bottles at the hotel , in the compartment with the sign “ Bathrobes . ” Not only robes of that kind , but suits , drogue , jumper , underwear – everything was sprayed on . I could see how that might invoke to women , because by free from a few or a few 12 nursing bottle a liquid that forthwith localize into cloth with texture smooth or rough — velvet , fur , or pliable metal — they could have a new creation every fourth dimension , each for one function only . Of course , not every cleaning woman did this for herself : there were special plasting salons ( so that was what Nais did ! ) , but the loaded - meet way that resulted from this did not much invoke to me … ”
And in the Galactic Pot - Healer , by Philip K. Dick , 1969 :
“ In increase , she had one of the modest waist he had ever seen , and in the permoform spray - foam blouse and pants this as well as the relaxation of her stood fully bring out . ”
( viaFabrican Ltd. )
Bluetooth headsets and wireless earbuds
The Seashell Radio from Ray Bradbury ’s Fahrenheit 451 , 1953 :
And in her ear the picayune Seashells , the thimble radio tamped tight , and an electronic sea of sound , of music and talk and medicine and talk coming in , hail in on the shore of her unsleeping judgement .
( viaTechnovelgy )
3D printers
First ensure in Star Trek TV serial ( The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine and Voyager ) . Now you could printmeat , any simple orcomplicated objects , buta fully - functionable side arm , too !
Billionaire Peter Thiel invests in the developing of 3-D publish pith
https://gizmodo.com/3d-printed-spiderbot-is-freakishly-lifelike-better-dan-758442700
you may now 3D - print a to the full operating handgun
( viaForeign Affairs )
Videophones
The Phonotelephote , from In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne , 1889 :
The first matter Mr. Smith does is activate his phonotelephote , the wires of which communicate with his Paris house . The telephote ! Here is another great victory of modern scientific discipline . The transmission of delivery is an old storey ; the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirror connected by wire is a thing but of yesterday . A valuable invention indeed ; Mr. Smith this daybreak is full of blessing for the artificer , when by its tending he is able distinctly to see his married woman despite her great aloofness .
Videophone concepts were really popularback in the 20th century , but now we have only the less cool FaceTime .
These Videophone Concepts Are Cooler Than Your iPhone ’s FaceTime
( viaApple )
Driverless pod cars in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, and United Arab Emirates, plus the ULTra cars at London’s Heathrow Airport
JohnnyCab from Total Recall ( 1990 , Paul Verhoeven ):
( viaTQSMagazine )
Automatic doors
When the Sleeper Wakes , by H. G. Wells , 1910 – fifty year later it sour into reality :
“ The two men addressed turned obediently , after one loath glimpse at Graham , and rather of going through the arch as he expected , walked straight to the dead wall of the flat opposite the archway . And then came a unknown matter ; a farsighted strip of this apparently substantial paries rolled up with a snap , advert over the two retreating gentleman and fall again , and directly Graham was alone with the new arrival and the purple - pluck man with the flaxen beard . ”
( viaChris Drumm )
Special thanks toTechnovelgy !
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