 Around 1900, many inventions revolutionized the world. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell developed the telephone, one of the most world-changing inventions ever made. Thomas Edison improved the electric light bulb to a long-lasting, inexpensive device (1878), invented the phonograph (1877). Karl Benz developed the first modern motorised car, which was first built in 1885. The Lumière brothers created the first motion picture projector or cinematograph, which they patented in 1895. Guglielmo Marconi built a wireless telegraphy system based on Hertzian waves and patended the radio in 1896. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's ideas for an airship were developed in 1893, whereas the Wright brothers invented and flew the first airplane in 1903. "En L'An 2000" No wonder that at the turn of the 19th century, the possibilities for the future seemed endless. This influenced many artists - just think about the immensely popular science fiction novels by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. In that time, collecting trade cards was popular among consumers. In the period 1899-1901, either a cigarette or toy company in France hired several graphic artists to create a series of illustrations called "En L'An 2000", on which they depicted what they thought everyday life would look like in the year 2000. Unfortunately, the company got out of business before the cards were distributed, leaving us with only one complete set of about 50 cards, that is now in the hands of Isaac Asimov. Luckily, he published a book about them. I found some trade cards by a chocolate company called Louit that seemed to have distributed cards with the futuristic pictures in a later year. Future visions A striking amount of the pictures feature flying vehicles, and thinking about how much happens in the sky, the people back then had a good view on the future. Even though postmen themselves don't fly, tons of mail is being distributed via air. Videoconferencing was foreseen, as well as aerial battles and breeding machines. We still can't walk on water, though water skiing comes close. I collected all the cards on a Pinterest board: Victorian Future Visions Hildebrand's trade cards In the same period, the German cacao company Hildebrand published a set of twelve trade cards depicting life in 2000. Hildebrands cards shows moving sidewalks, live broadcasting of theater performances in the living room, personal flying machines, a good weather machine (if only...!) and roofs over cities - as can be seen below.  The brothers Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were German cultural researchers and authors who collected and published German folklore during the 19th century.
Other than sometimes falsely assumed, the brothers didn't make up the fairy tales themselves, but penned down popular German folk tales. With the movement of Romanticism that started in the late 18th century, the interest in fairy tales revived. While Germany was still an assembly of kingdoms and (grand) duchies, the brothers strongly believed that national unity relied on the knowledge of the common cultural past that was reflected in folklore. In the introduction to their first book of collected fairy tales, the Grimms explain that they had travelled through Germany to talk with storytellers who supplied them with tales. Since the stories had been handed oraly from generation to generation, they often heard various versions of tales that were in fact the same stories. In these cases, the Grimms picked out the common content and molded it into a single tale. The first edition of Children's and Household Tales ("Kinder- und Hausmärchen") was published in 1812, but was in a constant state of alteration. During their lifetime, the work was published 17 times. Wilhelm was the main editor of the two, making the tales stilistically similar, adding psychological and sometimes religious plots and dialogue. |
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Photo used under Creative Commons from fusion-of-horizons
