Like a rolling home? Thirties vision of the 'House of the Future' is a huge ball with windows - towed around by a tractor



If the prospect of moving house fills you with dread then how about this - making your entire home move instead.



A magazine’s 1934 vision that predicted that homes of the future would be a giant movable ball has come to light after 80 years.



The editors thought that instead of standard bricks and mortar people would one day inhabit properties we could drive off ourselves if we wanted a change of scenery.

The ball - which had more than a dozen windows and a door on it - could be tethered to the ground at its new location using special tyres to keep it in place

The speculative story was based on a patent filed on December 17 1932 by US inventor E G Daniels which explained a new method for making sphere-shaped containers. According to Paleofuture it was ¿common for magazines to look at the recently filed patents and imagine what fantastical advancements of the future might be achieved¿





The ball - which had more than a dozen windows and a door on it - could be tethered to the ground at its new location using special tyres to keep it in place.

A picture of the home in the 1934 edition of ‘Everyday Science and Mechanics’ shows a typical suburban scene only with what looks like 30ft high golf balls instead of houses.

But it does not explain obvious potential problems, like what happens to the contents of your house when they are rolled along - or how you would make sure the front door was in the right place.



According to the Paleofuture blog on Smithsonian.com, details of the futuristic home was published in an Everyday Science article titled ‘When Home Owners Roll Their Own’.

Engineering and science magazines of the period commonly featured rather 'out there' ideas based on patents, or on plans mooted by inventors.

Many of these, sadly, never came to pass.



The article said: ‘If spherical, the house of the future can be easily transported to its building lot, set in place, and the fixtures added.



‘The shell is first pressed into shape; then windows are cut, and only a protective tire is need for moving.

The article goes on to say that ‘for well-known reasons, a tank or vessel shaped like a ball is strongest and lightest’.



It says: ‘Spherical tanks, gas containers, etc., have been made; the only problem is to construct them, since ordinary methods are not very successful.

‘Should spherical houses come into favour, as modernistic architects predict, the shell of a house could be made thus; the necessary openings cut; and it would be rolled to the owner’s lot as shown.

‘Properly built-in fixtures would even stand such moving.’

Magazines of the period commonly featured rather 'out there' projects: This ambitious American airport would have housed two-storey airliners UNDERGROUND - where there would also have been a US post office and underground railways

Another invention from a Thirties engineering periodical: The dimple machine, too, failed to catch on despite Modern Mechanics's predictions

The speculative story was based on a patent filed on December 17 1932 by US inventor E G Daniels which explained a new method for making sphere-shaped containers.

According to Paleofuture it was ‘common for magazines to look at the recently filed patents and imagine what fantastical advancements of the future might be achieved’.

The spherical home recalls a similar story published in the science fiction magazine ‘Amazing Stories’ in 1946 about an atomic-powered city that is housed in a giant ball.

The structure would supposedly move along a road and inside is like a hotel with a swimming pool, clubs and lounging areas.

The magazine article reads: ‘With atomic energy, it has been postulated that man will have many leisure hours that he never had before.