A look from 1930 into the distant 21st century

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 1930, the Soviet magazine Vokrug Sveta presented how humanity would live in 2000. The appearance of the Internet was predicted very accurately, after which the paper seal would die off, and banks would make payments on the network.

The economy will be based on the electric motor, and fossil fuels will only be used in the chemical industry. Transport in cities will go underground. Everyday life will take a minimum of time, and people will increasingly devote themselves to sports, education and travel. The only thing with which Soviet futurologists did not guess was that the transmission of electricity would take place without wires.

When reading this forecast, it is imperative to take into account from what socio-economic situation of the country it was written. 1930 - the urban population is only about 25%, and for the most part these are yesterday's peasants living in barracks, basements and communal apartments. People with higher education in the USSR - about 0.7%. Dirt, poverty, disorder, high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, street crime. Several modern factories, built by the Germans or the British, are just emerging in the country. By current criteria, the USSR in 1930 is a Third World country, something like modern Vietnam or Bangladesh.

And in these conditions, the authors of a futurological essay quite accurately describe the beginning of the XXI century. And it is sensible - there is no socialist fantasy typical of that time about the establishment of socialism throughout the entire globe and even on the Moon and Mars. On the contrary, there are many references to the experience of the United States, in which they did not hesitate to see the ideal of the scientific and economic structure of society in the USSR. We are citing the article "In 2000" from the magazine "Vokrug Sveta" No. 12, 1930, with minor abbreviations.

The coming century, in all likelihood, will be the century of electricity and the explosive use of new sources of power. At present, we are still on the threshold of this development, but everything speaks for the fact that in the coming years the importance of coal as a source of energy will significantly decrease, although the same coal can freely find itself widely used in another area of economic life.

What will be the new sources of energy, powerful enough for the growing needs of mankind? A simple and convincing answer is given to us by technical innovations, which are beginning to find application for themselves even today. Energy will begin to be extracted from the falling water, it will be extracted from the air and wind, they will be found in the depths of the earth, in the sea wave and sunlight.

New house

First of all, homework itself will be minimized. The "sacred fire" of the hearth will finally and irrevocably disappear. You do not have to pinch a torch for kindling or break coal into pieces. And the house itself will be conquered by the same electricity. From the cellar to the attic, there will be electric ovens everywhere, and gas and heating devices, served by distant stations. These huge central stations will provide the city with plenty of light and heat, using water, wind, air and other forms of energy that are still unknown to us. Huge buildings will acquire, perhaps, their own power plants.

Now everyone understands that our house, our household, in comparison with a factory or a factory, are hopelessly outdated, are still at a primitive stage of development. In all spheres of life tremendous achievements are visible and only one household has clearly lagged behind, which continues to demand the widest and longest use of human power. It is this backward type of economy that will be put to an end. The housewife no longer has to twirl a meat grinder or coffee mill, peel potatoes, knock dust out of carpets, wash and iron linen, polish shoes. A small engine and a comfortable car will replace our female servant, this hapless houseworker. The car and electricity will also make housework easier. Of course, the household also needs safety glass, which would be used to make all kinds of kitchen and tea utensils. And such a hard glass appeared already in 1926 in America, which is now thinking about the production of a special flexible glass.

The household will achieve significant simplification that will allow the mother to devote more time to raising and physically caring for her children. And our home itself will become more hygienic than it is now, not to mention the fact that a person will be more provided with a variety of gyms and playgrounds, sun towers, swimming pools, etc. Artificial lighting will equal daylight. If sunlight is valuable for its ultraviolet rays, which have such a beneficial effect on our body, then at present the same ultraviolet rays are included in artificial lighting.

Significant changes will also occur in the coming decades with incandescent light bulbs. Our current light bulbs are current eaters: only 10% of the energy they deliver turns into light, the rest goes almost entirely into warmth. Therefore, in the near future, there should appear "cold" light, or, in any case, one that will absorb much less heat. The possibility of such light is best proven by nature itself. After all, microscopic animals that cause the glow of the sea, as well as Ivanovo's worms, glow at night, not emitting any warmth from themselves at all.

It is now generally accepted that ordinary glass on our windows is harmful to the people living behind them. After all, these glasses are an insurmountable barrier to ultraviolet rays, which have such an amazing healing effect on the human body. The Biochemical Institute in Maine (America) has already managed to create a large glass from a rock crystal, 0.25 mm thick. It is clear that this invention is of great importance for the future. Likewise, the English scientist Lamplough managed in 1926 to invent the so-called. Vita-glass (Life-glass), which in the same way transmits ultraviolet rays through itself. The astonishing results of this innovation were clearly evident, first of all, in the Zoological Gardens of London, where vita-glass was inserted into various cells. And then the same beneficial effect of windows with vita-glass was confirmed in one school, where 30 students studied in one class for a year, whose health condition improved significantly than when classroom with ordinary windows.

What will our industry and our cities look like?

Their outward appearance will also change dramatically under the influence of new sources of power. Not a single factory chimney will smoke anymore, even in those places where heavy industry used to be concentrated. The age has come, which can do without fire. Everything became clean and beautiful. Gardens and lawns will begin to delight our eyes where smoke and soot used to rush. And all this people will owe to electricity and chemistry. Workers in white tunics stand at their machines in bright, clean factories; steam boilers and coal furnaces will become a thing of the past. The gigantic machines of today will disappear, in connection with the transition to other methods of work, when the silent electric machines begin to operate. Laws will appear that will prohibit the use of fire in industry, for electrical force and chemical treatment will freely bend iron, pour steel and melt cast iron.

What will our cities be like?

If earlier, in the Middle Ages, churches were the center of the city, now such a center is a clean and dust-free industry. Workers will arrive to work in the shortest possible time, using underground railways or their own cars. All mechanical means of communication will go underground, for the streets will be too narrow for the gigantic growth of traffic. Cities will be cut by a network of huge tunnels. Horses and cabs will disappear forever from our field of vision. Urban traffic will become much easier and quieter than today. The rattle of trams, the roar of cars and, in general, all the terrifying city hubbub that makes people nervous and sick - all this will disappear. All delivery of firewood and coal by trucks will cease, for central heating stations and electrical energy will supply an abundance of heat and light to every apartment. Pneumatic vacuum cleaners will drive around the streets and pick up dust.

In the same way, the end will come to our postmen. The city air mail will be connected to each house via special pipes. All letters and packages from central stations will instantly reach their destination. It is possible that by means of radio-electric writing at a distance, a person will be able to significantly simplify his written messages.

People will no longer live in narrow, cramped streets obscured by tall buildings. Completely new city layouts will be enacted to cope successfully with the ever-growing traffic; huge cities with a multimillion population will break up into much less than a unit with a population of several hundred thousand people. Already now, a large city is moving towards a special specialization, subdividing itself into a factory town, a commercial town, an administrative town, etc., and around it there are residential suburbs for the urban population and peasant farms supplying the town with food (for example, gardeners). The houses will be built in accordance with the needs of both a person and a variety of means and ways of communication.

The modern city is arranged so chaotically that it forces a person to waste a lot of energy and does not provide an opportunity to properly restore them after a busy day. For example, how much time does it take for a worker and a civil servant to travel to and from the workplace.

Europe can, of course, borrow a lot from America for urban development, but tall buildings must go hand in hand with city widening to cope with ever-increasing traffic. In this case, enough space will be provided in the city for the construction of central stations, airfields and large car garages. And the population itself can be hygienically settled only if the size of the city is sufficient so as not to be forever deafened by street noise and receive enough light and air. All communication routes will differ not only in their speed, but also in their accessibility and convenience. Of course, there will be no shortage of skyscrapers, but all tall buildings will not only have large windows and wide balconies, but also be surrounded by gardens and lawns; sports grounds will be arranged not only next to the houses, but also on the roofs, which will also provide space for air and sun bathing. Spacious rooms will be available for various gatherings or family gatherings, while the lower floors will be used for garages. It is possible that underground roads will also stop at the lower floors of huge houses, from where people living in them can immediately take the elevators to their private apartments.

Far-sightedness

Far-vision helped a person to get acquainted with world events not only in public places, but also in his apartment. Special power stations quickly make it possible to see any part of the world, more precisely, every corner of it. And the director of any factory will no longer need to get on a train or a car to come to an agreement with someone on an important matter. One phone will be enough for him to quite clearly see the person he needs on the matte plate and read from his face what is not conveyed by words alone. A loving couple, divided, perhaps, by a whole ocean or continent, will greet each other with the help of vision devices. Banks will begin to exchange their bills of exchange and checks through wireless image transmission.

As for newspapers, the shortage or high cost of wood will force people to abandon the printing of newspaper sheets. In a word, publishers use the same electrical installations for vision, which they supply to their subscribers. A small table is covered with a milky plate on top, on which light letters appear that make up editorials, feuilletons, chronicles, etc. Films can also be scattered among the text; After all, the wireless transmission of films was known back in 1926. Already today, the wireless transmission of letters, images and moving objects has advanced so much that it is only a matter of time before it will enter our everyday life. If already now, for example, it is possible not only to conduct telephone conversations between London and New York, but also to transmit images of a printed newspaper sheet within 5 minutes, then how far will such a technique go in the many decades remaining until 2000.

Cinema in the distance and radio waves

Cinema at a distance in 2000 is no longer surprising to anyone. They have long ceased to be amazed at the voices of film actors, since the first talking film was truly a success back in 1924; likewise, the gray monochromatic paintings disappeared from the canvas. Now they are already using color cinematography, which, in addition, plastically renders various images.

Among all the technical advances in recent years, the greatest successes have fallen to the share of radio waves. In the near future, it will be possible with their help to transmit not only sound and light images, but also high voltage currents. The famous electrophysicist Marconi in February 1927 in one of the scientific societies in London gave a report in which he defended the full possibility of wireless transmission of electrical energy. In the future, all cable networks for the distribution of electrical energy will be completely useless. The fulfillment of these technical predictions will, of course, revolutionize the entire system of our present technology. People will install such devices in various rooms and their homes, which will be set in motion with the help of transmitted electric waves. Airplanes, cars, locomotives, submarines and ships can use the energy transmitted to them wirelessly, obediently controlled by the electric motors installed in them. This will transform the entire technical aspect of human life.

Of course, we looked only at certain corners of the future life, touched upon only a few inventions that will find wide application in the near future. But what has already been said is enough to understand the inevitability of drastic changes in the whole structure of our present home life. Is it possible that our present household economy can survive in the future city with its broad planned economy, with central power stations, with the element of collective labor organized in it? When lighting, heating and food-making, when recreation and entertainment are socialized, then our household will not survive. It will drown in the socialist forms of a new life.