Found an obscure quote by Christiaan Huygens predicting the industrial revolution a century before its inception and predicting the airplane over two hundred years before its invention:
The violent action of the powder is by this discovery restricted to a movement which limits itself as does that of a great weight. And not only can it serve all purposes to which weight is applied, but also in most cases where man or animal power is needed, such as that it could be applied to raise great stones for building, to erect obelisks, to raise water for fountains or to work mills to grind grain …. It can also be used as a very powerful projector of such a nature that it would be possible by this means to construct weapons which would discharge cannon balls, great arrows, and bomb shells …. And, unlike the artillery of today these engines would be easy to transport, because in this discovery lightness is combined with power.
This last characteristic is very important, and by this means permits the discovery of new kinds of vehicles on land and water.
And although it may sound contradictory, it seems not impossible to devise some vehicle to move through the air ….
While ultimately land, water, and air vehicles wouldn’t be powered by Huygens’s gunpowder engine, it remains a remarkably prescient forecast. It should also give AI researchers and other futurists some hope in their ability to predict the next technological revolution.
Found an obscure quote by Christiaan Huygens predicting the industrial revolution a century before its inception and predicting the airplane over two hundred years before its invention:
While ultimately land, water, and air vehicles wouldn’t be powered by Huygens’s gunpowder engine, it remains a remarkably prescient forecast. It should also give AI researchers and other futurists some hope in their ability to predict the next technological revolution.