Prophet or futurist? 10 technologies Verne predicted in the 19th centuryFrom submarines to video calls: 10 Jules Verne inventions that came true

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Before science fiction was even a thing, Jules Verne was already inventing the future in his novels. He filled his adventures with strange contraptions, daring machines, and ideas that seemed unlikely in the 19th century. The twist? So many of those daydreams turned into everyday reality. From submarines gliding beneath the seas to rockets racing skyward, Verne’s stories can be read less as fantasy and more as a premonition of what was to come. What follows are ten of his most remarkable visions, proof of how closely imagination can become reality.

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In the 19th century, people regarded Verne’s stories as mere fantasy adventures. But flip through them today, and they feel like you are reading an early NASA mission report. In From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1869), the French writer imagines three daring men being shot into space from Florida, traveling inside a metal capsule. After a five-day trip to lunar orbit, the projectile lands safely in the ocean.

Although it was probably a crazy and far-fetched idea at the time, a century later, Apollo astronauts followed nearly the same playbook, proving that Verne’s "make-believe" wasn’t so impossible after all.

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Jules Verne was probably one of the first to dream of machines fueled by water instead of coal or oil. In his vision, the humble liquid would be split into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing its hidden energy to drive engines of the future. For readers in the 19th century, this idea felt both magical and oddly precise, as if Verne had peeked into tomorrow’s laboratories. Today, hydrogen power is still experimental, yet it remains one of science’s most promising—and elusive—goals, holding the potential for clean energy on a grand scale.

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Rising from the earth like shimmering glass mountains, Jules Verne imagined ever-shining cities. He pictured towers of steel and glass that didn’t go dark at sunset but glowed brilliantly through the night, powered by the then-new magic of electricity. Inside, elevators would whisk people effortlessly upward, transforming the way cities could be built. Back then, most buildings barely climbed ten stories, and the idea of infinite skylines was almost otherworldly. Today, it’s exactly what we see through the window in any modern city.

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Imagine reading about a ship that could submerge into the waves and roam the oceans like a sea creature long before such a thing was possible. That’s exactly what Jules Verne wrote about in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). His Nautilus was a 230-foot machine, armed with a library of 12,000 books and capable of sinking any ship.

Although Verne didn’t actually invent submarines, at the time of the book’s publication, they were no more than unreliable and primitive prototypes. If anything, Verne’s fictional vessel anticipated the technology of the submarines that now explore the oceans of the real world. His invention might have been a fantasy, but it was also a glimpse into the future.

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Can you imagine having to hear the news secondhand in the town square? Jules Verne probably knew that, in the future, people would need to be informed at all times. So, he invented a daily news report delivered by voice—spoken bulletins that could be piped straight into homes and even announced at public kiosks. We can only imagine what this meant for his readers in the 19th century, but we can now easily relate to the news being available whenever we want. Long before antennas or TV screens, he foresaw a world where the latest headlines could arrive instantly, without a scrap of paper.

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Many years ago, a machine flying through the sky as high as a cathedral with the ease of a bird would have seemed improbable. But Jules Verne’s imagination could go as far as he wanted. In Robur the Conqueror (1886), he introduces the "Albatross," a fantastic flying ship that can lift straight off the ground, hover in place, and maneuver with uncanny grace. Does this description sound familiar? That’s because Verne outlined the blueprint for the helicopter decades before engineers made it real in the 20th century.

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What seemed like a futuristic gadget in 1889 now feels like part of our everyday lives. In his novel In the Year 2889, Jules Verne describes the "phonotelephote," a device that allows people not only to communicate with others who are miles away but also to see each other’s faces in real time. For 19th-century readers, the idea was dazzling, almost too magical to believe. Yet today, we hardly think twice before tapping into a video call on our phones or computers. Verne essentially predicted FaceTime and Zoom calls a full century before the first computer was even connected to the internet.

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Many decades before the first electric cars ever rolled off an assembly line, Jules Verne was already letting his imagination race ahead. In The Mysterious Island (1874), he described wagons that needed no horses, powered instead by rechargeable batteries. To 19th-century readers, the idea of a vehicle moving smoothly on its own was unthinkable, closer to magic than mechanics. Yet Verne’s vision sounds strikingly familiar to anyone who has seen a quiet electric car glide down the highway today. What was once a dream in the pages of a novel has become a daily sight in traffic.

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Poetic yet technical—that was Jules Verne’s gift. Take his vision of music made not with violins or flutes, but with machines. In his once-shelved novel Paris in the Twentieth Century (written in 1863 but not published until the 1990s), the writer imagined concerts filled with sounds produced by electrical instruments. For 19th-century readers, it probably sounded absurd. Yet a hundred years later, synthesizers and electric keyboards defined popular music, proving Verne had once again tuned in early to the future.

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A ship that needs no fuel, gliding through space on nothing but light—it sounds like poetry. Yet Verne imagined exactly that. He described enormous sails stretched wide, catching not the wind but the faint pressure of sunlight itself and using it to push vessels across the vast silence of space. In his day, it was a dream almost too delicate to believe, like navigating the ocean with moonbeams. But the image stuck, and now scientists and space agencies are testing real solar sails, proving that his most poetic vision wasn’t just fantasy but a glimpse of tomorrow waiting to unfold in orbit.

Mind games

Genes, rules, and why free will isn’t really free

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We like to think we’re in control of our choices, but free will may be more illusion than reality. From brain chemistry to social conditioning, powerful forces shape our behavior long before we become aware of them. While there is still room for change and spontaneous decisions, we are often "hijacked" by unconscious processes. Here are 10 factors that make us more predictable than we might think.

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Just like a quick-draw gunslinger, the brain knows what to do long before we consciously decide to act. Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments in the 1980s showed that brain activity spikes before a person becomes aware of their decision to move.

In these studies, participants were asked to flex their wrists at random moments. Their brains exhibited a "readiness potential"—a buildup of neural activity—up to 500 milliseconds before they reported having made the decision to move. This suggests that the brain initiates actions before the conscious mind "decides."

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According to some scientists, genetic makeup may influence many personal characteristics—from impulsivity to political beliefs—effectively narrowing the kinds of decisions we're likely to make.

This doesn’t mean our genes entirely shackle us, but they do seem to play a significant role in shaping personality. Twin studies have shown that traits such as risk-taking, patience, and even religiosity may have heritable components.

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Though it may seem obvious, early environments—such as nutrition, stress levels, and parenting—play a powerful role in shaping neural development and future decision-making ability.

Children raised in poverty or wartime conditions show differences in prefrontal cortex development, changes that might affect life choices for decades.

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Certain "pleasure chemicals" in the brain—especially dopamine—can heavily steer decision-making without conscious input.

When we anticipate a reward, dopamine surges in brain regions like the striatum, which are involved in evaluating actions and outcomes. This biases us toward actions with immediate gratification—even when we "know better."

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Once formed, habits bypass conscious deliberation and begin to operate automatically.

Research shows up to 40% of daily actions are driven by habit. The basal ganglia stores these patterns, allowing us to function on autopilot without making active choices.

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Patients with severed corpus callosums reveal how the brain constructs post-hoc justifications for actions.

In split-brain studies, when one hemisphere initiates an action, the other often makes up a reason for it, demonstrating that we sometimes confabulate explanations rather than make fully conscious, deliberate choices.

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Sometimes, messages received below conscious awareness can still affect behavior.

In controlled studies, priming participants with certain words or images—such as "elderly" or "money"—can alter their actions and choices, even though they don’t realize it happened.

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We’re wired to mimic others, often without realizing it. While this begins as a survival trait linked to learning in early childhood, its powerful influence can shape our behavior later in life.

First discovered in monkeys and later observed in humans, mirror neurons fire when we see others perform actions. This automatic imitation affects behavior, learning, and even emotional responses—all without conscious intention.

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The more choices we make, the worse our judgment tends to become over time.

For example, studies have shown that judges are more likely to grant parole early in the day. By afternoon, mental exhaustion sets in, and denial rates spike.

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Culture shapes our values, desires, and what choices are considered acceptable from birth onward.

Whether you believe in individualism or collectivism, what foods you enjoy, or how you define success—all these are shaped by your cultural environment long before conscious reasoning takes hold.