Read the beginning of Chapter 1 from The Year 3000: A Dream by Paolo Mantegazza, edited and with an introduction by Nicoletta Pireddu, translated by David Jacobson:

"Paolo and Maria left Rome, capital of the United States of Europe, in the largest of their aerotachs, the one intended for long trips.

This is an electrically run airship. By releasing a spring, they convert the two comfortable armchairs in the middle of the ship into quite comfortable beds. Opposite the chair-beds are a compass, a small table, and a quadrant bearing the three words motion, heat, light.

With the touch of a button the aerotach sets off, reaching speeds of up to 150 kilometers an hour.¹ With the touch of another button the room can be heated to the temperature of your choice, and the touch of a third button lights up the ship. A simple switch turns the electricity into heat, light, movement, whatever your pleasure.

The walls of the aerotach are stocked with enough provisions to last ten days: condensed juices of albuminoids and carbon hydrides, representing kilograms of meat and vegetables; very cohobated aethers replicating the scents of the most pungent fl owers and all the most exquisite fruits; a small canteen with a plentiful supply of three elixirs that stimulate the brain centers that regulate the major forces of life: thought, movement, and love.²

There is no need in the aerotach for mechanics or servants, since everyone from early school days has learned to drive it wherever they want to go. One of the quadrants tells you the kilometers covered, the room temperature, and wind direction.

Paolo and Maria brought just a few books with them, among them The Year 3000, written ten centuries earlier by a physician with a bizarre imagination who tried to guess what human life would be like a millennium on."

For notes 1 and 2 please refer to the print edition of this book.