15 Hilarious Predictions About the Year 2020 Made Long Ago

And our houses will be cleaned by hoses.

The New York Times’ longtime science editor Waldemar Kaempffert, who worked for the paper from the 1920s through the 1950s, had lots of opinions about how different the world would be by the 21st century.

In a 1950 Popular Mechanics article, titled “Miracles You’ll See in the Next 50 Years,” he predicted that by the 21st century, all you’ll have to do to get your house clean is “simply turn the hose on everything.”

That’s because Kaempffert imagined furniture would be made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. “After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber),” all you’d have to do is “turn on a blast of hot air” to dry everything.

What about not-so-resilient material, you ask? Just “throw soiled ‘linen’ into the incarcerator!”