5 Modern Technologies 'The Jetsons' Accurately Predicted 60 Years Ago
When The Jetsons premiered in 1962, show writers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera imagined what the future might look like in 100 years. They also created George Jetson, the “dad of the future,” to handle the trials and tribulations of the nuclear household of 2062, and they set his date of birth as July 31, 2022(Opens in a new window).
In celebration of this beloved cartoon father's birthday, we decided to take a look at the various gizmos and gadgets in the show to see how much of it might have inspired modern technologies we use today. It turns out there's a quite a lot.
Perhaps the most obvious bit of tech from The Jetsons to make its way to the modern age is the video call. Video calls took place regularly on the show, most often for connecting family members to one another or for connecting George to his boss.
Notably, the first real video call(Opens in a new window) took place long before the show was even created, in 1927, to connect then-US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in Washington, D.C. to then-AT&T President Walter Gifford in New York City. AT&T later announced video conferencing as a subscription service(Opens in a new window) at the 1964 World’s Fair, but canceled it in the '70s due to low subscription rates. Nowadays video calling is so commonplace that most of the popular services we use on a regular basis are offered for free.
The cultural impact of Rosie the robot cannot be overstated when talking about tech from The Jetsons. While having a personal robot assistant like Rosie still remains largely a dream, voice assistants are very much a reality that many of us use on a daily basis. And let's not forget about robot vacuums and mops, two welcome household 'bots that do some of the dirty work
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