The Future Ain't What It Used to Be Dept.

From a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics:

Caption: "Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose."

My wife has been asking for a waterproof kitchen with a drain in the floor ever since we went to London in 1987 and saw one of those self-washing pay toilets on the street.

I must say, though, that as I'm typing this, my Roomba robot vacuum cleaner is working away, only 35 years after the 1970 date that Robert Heinlein forecast for the first commercial vacuum cleaner in his 1957 novel The Door into Summer. My wife admits she has to spend more time grooming Roomba with compressed air blasts to keep the rabbit hair from jamming the gears than she saves in not doing the vacuuming herself, but she still finds having a dutiful robot servant to be emotionally satisfying.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer