At the end of the 19th century, postcards drawn by various European artists predicting scenes from the future were hidden inside cigarette packs and chocolate boxes.

We would like to share with you a series of these fascinating illustrations that depicted the world as it was imagined to be like today.

Knowledge being channeled into students’ heads through headsets at school.

Barbers cutting their clients’ hair all at once by operating a single, multifunctional machine.

Flying taxis circling over cities and giving lifts to residents.

Police possessing flying gadgets go after aerial criminals at large.

A war fought in the skies involving a battleship attached to a gigantic balloon.

Farmers cultivating their lands simply by sitting in front of an electric device, pressing buttons and handling a lever.

A maid cleans a house with the help of an electric scrubbing machine.

People travel beneath the ocean by underwater buses drawn by tamed whales.

Riding on eels.

People playing croquet at the bottom of the sea.

People fishing the other way round.

Transportable blocks of houses being carried by freight trains.

People using airships as an everyday form of transportation.

People walk on water with the help of individual air balloons that keep them on the surface.

Amphibious railway boats.

A roof installed over an entire city to protect residents from heavy showers and storms.

Automatic moving sidewalks carry people in every direction.

A weather-control machine chasing the storm clouds away.

Video calls and communication that’s not dependent on distance.