A Diversion: Sketch the Future

I was checking out Retronaut the other day for some exciting abandoned boats, and I came across these awesome sketches:

Check out more of them here. They are basically a collection of sketches from 1910 envisioning what life might be like in 2000, with particular reference to machines, transport and gizmos. They are ridiculously quaint, and made me think perhaps you can only conceive the future within the constraints of your current knowledge and surroundings. Everyone is still dressed like it's 1910 (how could they possibly fathom jeans, lycra, zips...pah) and a lot of the adorably daft contraptions have something of the Willy Wonka about them. Maybe, without a crystal ball, you really can't predict future design.

My mum disagrees. She said we already have conceived futuristic design concepts. We may have chosen jet planes over those firemen with foxy dragon-style flight packs as a more commercially viable option, but the wings are there on both. True. On closer inspection the sketch where the architect's vision is built by machines as he designs it from a booth, reminds me of our current ability to scan dimensions and get the computer to build 3D models. Some of the design is there in embryonic form, even if for the most part the depictions are fancy, ornate and hilariously tin-pot. But you've got to start somewhere, right?

My mum's trump card was Italian Renaissance visionary and all-round Big Beard, Leonardo Da Vinci. A very forward thinking engineer, inventor and designer for his time, Da Vinci was responsible for the first known helicopter design in 1495. Flying was the absolute summit of people's conception and Leonardo was obsessed with cracking it. He produced and tested countless designs long before anyone successfully took to the skies. And the 'helicopter' model, though designed within the constraints of the raw materials and knowledge available then had all the makings of a machine built for vertical flight - 500 years before it actually happened.

I'm a massive fan of L'Dav's handwriting. Possibly inspired by the long flowing strokes of his beard...

So hats off to my mum, for blowing my narrow mind. And really, in the light of Apple man Steve Jobs' death, we need more visionaries. However wacky-looking any blueprint might initially be; honed and modified, it might just turn out to be an invention that changes the world.

Whatever happens though, I'm definitely getting me one of these: