Take Inspector Gadget , for instance. Despite originally airing in the early '80s and having a shamelessly implausible cartoon premise, the cartoon managed to correctly predict more trends in the modern world than most serious speculative fiction novels.

5 Gadget's Niece Invented The iPad Before Steve Jobs

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30 years ago:

The whole point of Inspector Gadget was that they lived in a world full of technology that was utterly insane, to the point of being ridiculous and/or useless. Every gag could be boiled down to, "Can you imagine if they made a little helicopter that deployed out of your hat? How fucking ridiculous would that be!" Well, in 1983, one of those insane "can you even imagine?" gadgets belonged to the Inspector's niece, Penny, whose futuristic "computer book" of her own invention had video-chatting, a giant database where she could look up practically anything and, most impressively, a display with more than three colors.

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It even had a USB port, apparently.

In case you weren't around back then, this is what a "personal computer" looked like back in 1983 -- they were called "personal" because they actually fit inside the house.

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Barely.

So, not only was Penny's computer book smaller and more potent than anything that existed (or we believed would ever exist), but also she could use it to control other machines -- sometimes without even touching them -- thus foiling Dr. Claw's plans.

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"That Kim Possible bitch ain't got shit on me."

That little gizmo actually solved more crimes than Gadget himself.

Today:

Unless you print out our articles to read them in the toilet, there's a huge chance you're looking at a device much like Penny's computer book right now. Between wireless connections, laptops that close like books and tablets the size of a magazine, the computer book doesn't seem as science fiction-y now as it did in 1983.