From family flying saucer rides to domestic living on the lunar surface, these gorgeous retrofuturism illustrations reveal how previous generations thought their future might look.

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Share it: Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 33 Vintage Mugshots That Bring The Past To Life 99 Stunning Colorized Photos That Breathe New Life Into The Past In The Not-So-Distant Past, People Used Dogs For Labor, Not Companionship 1 of 56 A painting depicting the future as envisioned from circa 1950. Ed Vebell/Getty Images 2 of 56 The beach vacation of the future. 3 of 56 4 of 56 5 of 56 House of Tomorrow from Mechanix Illustrated. Circa 1950. joebehr/Flickr 6 of 56 Painting of futuristic transports in the city. Artist: Anton Brzezinski. Forrest J. Ackerman Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images 7 of 56 Mail delivered by rockets. Artist: Frank Tinsley. 1957. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 8 of 56 Centrifugal force rejuvenation or a reverse-aging process. 1935. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 9 of 56 A futuristic machine shop. Artist: Boris Artzybasheff x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 10 of 56 A futuristic machine shop Artist: Boris Artzybasheff x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 11 of 56 Futuristic view of air travel over Paris in the year 2000 as people leave the opera. Artist: Albert Robida. 1882. Wikimedia Commons 12 of 56 Shopping in the future. 1965. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 13 of 56 An American mother and daughter arrive home from shopping in a futuristic spaceship. Circa 1950s. GraphicaArtis/Getty Images 14 of 56 An illustration from the late 1950s of a self-driving car. 15 of 56 Another concept idea for a self-driving car. 16 of 56 A futuristic limo with butterfly doors. 17 of 56 Behind the wheel of a future car. 18 of 56 A network of tube trains under a city. Artist: Klaus Burgle. 1969. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 19 of 56 An inflatable lunar base. Artist: Shigeru Komatsuzaki. Circa 1970s. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 20 of 56 A futuristic bus that can house planes and cars. joebehr/Flickr 21 of 56 The Hoppicopter, a comfortable, single-seat vehicle for cheap air transportation. Artist: Frank Tinsley. 1950. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 22 of 56 An advanced transportation system. 1912. Wikimedia Commons 23 of 56 The landscape of the future: tall buildings with winding, gravity-defying roads and moving sidewalks. 24 of 56 Trains cross the sky against a backdrop of skyscrapers. 25 of 56 Astronauts on another planet. Artist: Fred Freeman. 1954. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 26 of 56 Repairing a lunar space base. 27 of 56 Space food from the sci-fi film Conquest of Space by George Pal. 1956. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 28 of 56 An amphibious and futuristic RV vehicle. 1947. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 29 of 56 An underwater home. Artwork: Charles Schridde. Circa 1961–63. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 30 of 56 31 of 56 32 of 56 Life inside a futuristic glass house. 33 of 56 The half-mile-high pleasure tower, complete with a restaurant and a 500-car garage. 1933. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 34 of 56 Voice bombs, tape recorders suspended from balloons which would speak messages of propaganda directly to enemy soldiers. Artist: Frank Tinsley. 1951. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 35 of 56 An Au Bon Marche comical futuristic ad card from Paris, France. 1890. Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images 36 of 56 Women pose outdoors, modeling futuristic fashions for the year 2000, during Engineering Week. Circa 1965. Hulton Archive/Getty Images 37 of 56 Illustration from A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future by John Jacob Astor. 1894. archive.org 38 of 56 Seattle as imagined in 2014 — in the year 1914. joebehr/Flickr 39 of 56 From World of Tomorrow — School, Work and Play, a book published in 1981 that envisioned what the world would look like in the future with the implementation of various technologies. 40 of 56 The future is . . . not whatever this is. x-ray_delta_one/Flickr 41 of 56 Image from the 2001 film CQ, which has a 1960s sci-fi sub-plot. mononukleoza/Flickr 42 of 56 NASA-commissioned space colony concept art from the 1970s. nasacommons/Flickr 43 of 56 NASA's envisioned colony would look a lot like Earth, but it would have a metallic engine in the center. nasacommons/Flickr 44 of 56 These colonies were meant to accommodate 10 trillion people in millions of space cities across the galaxy. nasacommons/Flickr 45 of 56 The cities' walls would be transparent so that residents could admire outer space. nasacommons/Flickr 46 of 56 The space cities could accommodate everything real cities could: houses, greenery, roads, and rivers. nasacommons/Flickr 47 of 56 Each colony would hold approximately 10,000 people within its doughnut-shaped walls. nasacommons/Flickr 48 of 56 The hypothesis was that people would be able to travel to these space colonies as early as 2060. nasacommons/Flickr 49 of 56 The colonies would communicate with each other via radio. nasacommons/Flickr 50 of 56 Farms would sustain the colonies in the far reaches of outer space. nasacommons/Flickr 51 of 56 Residents would have to contend with zero gravity. nasacommons/Flickr 52 of 56 A video imagining the city of the future from 1936. 53 of 56 A concept design from 1969 of a nuclear-proof city below Manhattan. 54 of 56 An idea from the early 1950s for a television newspaper. 55 of 56 The influences of Googie, Populuxe, and Doo Wop design are evident in the curved surfaces and fascination with glass. 56 of 56 Like this gallery?

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55 Depictions Of How People In The Past Envisioned Life Now View Gallery

Retrofuturism is the past's vision of the future — that is, it's what the people of yesterday thought today would look like. Their ideas run the gamut from charmingly naïve and amusingly ambitious to alarmingly accurate, and they've inspired a movement in the present as artists, designers, musicians, and filmmakers channel the technological dreams of a bygone age.

Retrofuturism: The Past Imagines The Future

The term "retrofuturism" is a relatively recent one. It appeared in the wake of the technological advances of the 70s and 80s, when science made enormous strides — but not always in the directions the inhabitants of the early 20th century had anticipated. The dreams of the past began to look quaint and implausible in a way that many found nostalgic.

It makes sense that retrofuturism as a genre rose to popularity at the same time as dystopian science fiction and fantasy were garnering renewed interest. As the future was beginning to look like a stranger, scarier place than it once had, a new enthusiasm emerged for the sometimes comically rosy predictions of previous generations.

And what predictions they were.

If the retrofuturistic illustrations of the past are anything to judge by, the early 20th century had a yen for better transportation, much of it airborne. They dreamed of private helicopters, hover cars, dirigibles, and personal spaceships that float freely or along suspended highways.

Roads are magnetized hoops that rise hundreds of feet above the ground, shimmering glass tubes that wind their way through the city like Mario Kart's Rainbow Road, or space-age underground tunnels.

Domestic life, too, is radically different through the lens of retrofuturism. Busy commuters pop a pill that tastes just like a chicken pot pie — but without the inconvenience of having to make or even eat one.

Fashion favors tall plastic boots, skintight chrome, and PVC anything, and homes are often beautiful glass affairs (suggesting we've done away with both privacy and bricks). Some of them are on the moon.

Even the most conservative projections feature dramatically simplified domestic duties, like this 1960s video explaining a futuristic kitchen:

What Retrofuturism Looks Like

Though many of the images most common to retrofuturism are laughable from the perspective of the present, the dreamers of the past got more than a few things right: self-driving cars, a common retrofuturistic fantasy, are close to fruition. Video conferencing and wrist accessories that play TV shows are everyday realities, and robots (or at least automated systems) already exist in many homes — and certainly in factories.

Retrofuturistic designs often feature Googie, Populuxe, and Doo Wop aesthetics, leaning heavily on popping neon colors, svelte steel, curvy geometric shapes, and as much glass as possible — a blend that has earned its own deeply appropriate name: Raygun Gothic.

There's also another side of retrofuturism that deals not with the past's view of the future, but rather with the present's view of the past. Writers and artists reimagine the past with technological advances from the future, creating a strange new past that never happened.

The most famous example of this kind of retrofuturism is steampunk, a genre of art and fiction that gifts old technologies (often steam power) with modern or near-modern capabilities in a historical setting, typically the Victorian era.

Retrofuturism In Popular Culture

The 2004 cult classic Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a strong example of retrofuturism on the big screen. The movie sets a robot invasion in 1939 New York, and it's up to an intrepid reporter (Gwyneth Paltrow) and a fighter pilot (Jude Law) to defeat an evil German scientist with a doomsday device.

It should be noted that not all of retrofuturism is blindingly optimistic. Though nostalgia is a common theme, retrofuturistic stories do sometimes confront dystopian ideas, especially when set in a particularly bleak period of the past.

Terry Gilliam's 1985 Brazil, for example, paints a satirical picture of a consumer-driven dystopia where ineffective machines make for a mind-numbingly dull existence under the rule of a 1984-style totalitarian government.

Today, retrofuturism is on the rise. While previous decades have seen the movement confined to cult classics, its themes and iconic looks are becoming increasingly mainstream. Incredibles director Brad Bird cited retrofuturism as one of his influences, and it's not hard to see retro sensibilities in the look of the Pixar classic.

Video games, too, have taken an interest, notably the popular BioShock series, which was influenced, according to designer Ken Levine, in part by retrofuturistic works like George Orwell's 1984.

It's enough to make you wonder — what will the generations of tomorrow think when they look back on our visions of the future? What will they think about our dreams?

Want more illustrations from bygone ages like this retro futuristic art? Check out this erotic art that proves people have always had sex on the brain. Then read up on the disturbing art from the depressingly racist ads of decades past.