Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Monday, 8 October 2018

Visions of future past reviewed

Let's review our progress as anticipated a century ago.

1) A robotic barber. Nope, don't have those.
2) A battle Zeppelin. Nope, don't have those.
3) Aerial intracity taxis. Not quite yet, and if and when we do, they won't look like that. And we definitely won't launch aircraft with wings as the primary means of lift by dropping them off a platform about 3 metres off the ground.
4) Ariel postmen. No, and winged aircraft can't fly that slowly.
5) Errr... riding undersea, giant (robotic ?) seahorses ? Umm, no. Very no.
6) A roomba. Yes ! Though they look a bit different.
7) Umm... errr... going diving and throwing fishing lines through the surface of the water to catch seagulls. No, and... why ? Just, why ?
8) Using a birdman suit to arrest misbehaving pilots. Not quite, though this is surely even better : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPvKl6ezyc
9) Manned surveillance drone. Almost !
10) Some kind of super super super fast egg incubator ? No, because that's not how eggs work.
11) Using wing suits to battle giant eagles and steal their eggs. No, for lots of reasons.
12) Racing giant fish underwater. Srsly.
13) A robotic orchestra. Well, sure, I guess.
14) A mobile home. Yes, but not this literally.
15) Feeding books into a machine and turning a crank that turns them into sound delivered via headphones. I guess... kinda ?
16) Robotic beauty parlours. Nope.
17) Armoured cars. Yes ! Though it's not typical to ram your opponent.
18) An aerial bomber. Yes !
19) Underwater croquet. Well, it's not mainstream.
20) A whale pulling an underwater tour bus. Umm, no, but I want one.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/france-in-the-year-2000-1899-1910/

11 comments:

  1. I am totally in for a battle zeppelin, by the way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joerg Fliege Battle zeppelins were a thing during Steampunk War (aka WWI), though they were bombers, not gunships, and only the Germans built them, the French using airplane bombers instead.
    They were studied again recently for long-duration aerial surveillance drones by the US military, but like quite a few projects, they mismanaged it so hard the program got cancelled despite being pretty functional tech-wise. Fortunately, this time the resulting tech was bought by a British civilian company so at least it won't go to waste, but it will probably not be used for military purposes ultimately.

    Also I want a robotic barber.

    The closest thing we have to aerial postmen is delivery drones like Amazon is developing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Air Taxi:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Manhattan_Heliport

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Fatigue failure of main landing gear strut caused helicopter to roll over while idling and taking on passengers atop the Pan-Am building in Mid-town Manhattan. Michael Findley (39, film producer) died. A women hit and killed by debrise falling on the streets below the building.

    https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=14207

    https://web.archive.org/web/20070930023757/http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR77-09.pdf
    en.wikipedia.org - Downtown Manhattan Heliport - Wikipedia

    ReplyDelete
  4. As I look at this image, I'm wearing headphones. I haven't found the knowledge download feature yet ...

    Joerg Fliege For you: boardgamegeek.com - Leviathans
    It's a mediocre game, but very pretty, and the Zeppelin miniatures are cool.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dan Eastwood The fallacy is that knowledge isn't downloaded. It's inscribed.

    To in-form. Literally, to shape the mind.

    Since minds differ relatively greatly, the role of teacher is to assess reception and guide. Something static texts or A/V streams cannot do.

    ReplyDelete

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