En L'An 2000: Electric Scrubbing Machine, French Retro-Future Postcard c.1900

In a bourgeois Parisian parlor of the imagined year 2000, a uniformed maid guides a spindly, wheeled electric scrubbing machine across a parquet floor — its articulated brass arms wielding brushes like a mechanical spider. This chromolithograph from the celebrated 'En L'An 2000' series envisions domestic automation as elegant rather than alien, blending Victorian interior comfort with whimsical proto-robotic technology, capturing the optimistic Belle Époque faith that electricity would liberate — or at least assist — the working household.