Modern Mysteries

Old film from 1947 predicted 'mobile phones'

By T.K. Randall
July 2, 2020

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Historical depictions of the future, especially those in TV shows and movies from the first half of the 20th Century, tended to focus on woefully whimsical space-age concepts that were pretty far off the mark, but as it turns out, some early predictions of the 21st Century were surprisingly accurate.

One prime example of this is the 1947 film "Television: Oeil de Demain" or "Television of Tomorrow", which was based on a short story by Rene Barjavel and produced by J. K. Raymond-Millet as a depiction of the future as envisaged only a few short years after the end of World War II.

In a 4-minute clip from the film that has been recently doing the rounds on Twitter, people can be seen going about their daily lives while glued to tiny television sets reminiscent of today's mobile phones.

While the devices themselves aren't quite spot on, the behavior of people using them certainly is - with people walking around, sitting in cafes and going about their business while glued to the screen.The film also shows someone driving along while watching a screen fitted to their car's dashboard.

It even predicts that people will be so engrossed in such devices that they will inadvertently walk into one another and even get into car accidents because they are not paying attention to driving.

(We're not sure about the man sneakily watching a holographic projection of a woman dancing while his wife is sleeping in bed next to him, however!)

You can check out the clip from the film below.


Source: Openculture.com

Tags: Predictions