Will It Be A 'Jetsons' Future? Predictions For The Year 2062

The Jetsons was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that originally aired on prime-time television from September 23, 1962 to March 17, 1963 for a total of only 24 episodes. It was a short run for a television show but it got everyone’s attention. The show was an animated sitcom about a futuristic family, and was actually the first show to air in full color on the ABC television network. Just the fact that the show aired in color was futuristic in and of itself.

The show premiered at the height of the Space Race. The United States and the Soviet Union were in close competition to see who would make space travel to the moon first. Less than a year before the first episode of The Jetsons aired, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 space capsule. The Jetsons may have been a nod to that success.

The family consisted of George and Jane Jetson and their children Judy and Elroy. They also had a lovable space dog named Astro, and a robotic housekeeper named, Rosie. The family lived in outer space in a floating home equipped with all of the conveniences thought to be on the horizon of the future.

It was never really clear, from watching the show, what year it was set in, but according to an original press release when the show first came out, it was to have been 100 years in the future. That would make the show set in the year 2062.

In 1962, The Flintstones had already been on the air for two years. It was fun watching them live in the dinosaur age, using primitive means to do everyday things. We really counted ourselves lucky not to have lived in that time. The Jetsons enjoyed and took for granted a world filled with fanciful inventions and apparati to make their lives easier. There were robots acting and taking the place of humans as well as holograms. And yet -- as on any sitcom ever made -- people are people, and therefore problems and hilarity will ensue.

The Jetson family lived in a floating city and had futuristic conveniences at their fingertips. Buttons appeared throughout the house that did everything from making their meals to brushing their teeth. Whatever chores needed to be done that the buttons didn’t cover, Rosie the housekeeper would take it from there.  

George Jetson, like most husbands and fathers in the '60s, had a job. He worked for Spacely’s Sprockets. His main function was to turn a switch on and off. One prediction that actually has come to fruition was the video chat. Back in the 1960s, that was a mind-blowing concept. Even with a dream job like that, he still managed to get into trouble with his boss. It is no wonder he needed all of those timesaving contraptions considering the exhausting days he spent doing his job.

Although it was animated, The Jetsons was influential -- indeed, a post at the Smithsonian website acclaims the show as “the single most important piece of 20th century futurism… that helped define the future for so many Americans today.”.

The Jetsons first premiered over 50 years ago, and we still have another 43 years to go if we're to truly see whether the the show accurately predicted the world of 2062. We have come a long way since the 1960s, and some of the predictions have actually come to fruition. We may be on schedule to have jetpacks and flying scooters -- but flying cars that turn in to briefcases still seem out of reach, even by 2062.