Second edition of Albert Robida's science fiction masterpiece. A visionary depiction of life in the near future, the 1950s and 1960s, imbued with brilliant irony and extraordinary foresight: the author imagines inventions and innovations destined to radically transform modern life almost seventy years in advance. Robida's inventive genius prefigures the telephone, the telegraph, the telephonoscope—a surprising forerunner of live television and videoconferencing—as well as national parks, ecological themes, travel agencies, a ministry of leisure, rooftop advertising, balloon races, the subway, the colonization of the moon, and, above all, women's emancipation; all accompanied by a wealth of illustrations.