Inventions from Back to the Future

When the dynamic duo of time travellers – Marty and Doc Brown – arrived in the year 2015 in the movie Back to the Future Part II, they were bombarded with a number of out-of-this-world inventions. Inventions that we do, in fact, use every day … they just look a bit more high-tech than they did in the movie.

Flatscreens: We’re so done with box televisions. Now it’s all about flat screen, wall mounted television – just like the ones spotted in the movie.

Tablets: In Back to the Future Doc Brown is often spotted carrying around a tablet-style computer. Hello Apple. Tablets are now more commonly used than desktop computers and come from a number of brands including Samsung and Lenovo.

3D movies: You can’t step into a movie theatre these days without at least one 3D movie being screened. Although 3D movies have existed in some form or other since 1915, the biggest one that comes to mind is the success of Avatar, which hit big screens in December 2009 and January 2010.

There’s also smart glasses, which we now call Google Glass, video conferencing, which we call Skype or Facetime, facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, and online banking and motion controlled video games … aka Wii.

So what haven’t we invented yet?

Flying cars: A number of these bad boys appear in the movie but have yet to be released in real life. And we doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon.

Self-tying shoelaces: These haven’t become a thing yet because most people wear pumps or shoes that still use Velcro. And we’re just not that lazy yet.

Hoverboards: This is probably the biggest gripe. Everyone is dying to hop onto a hoverboard – imagine the time you’d save. However, all is not lost. Hoverboards have been invented. Lexus tried their hand at it and legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk even got to try out the Hendo 2.0. We’re just holding our breath until they hit the shelves.

Check out these videos of the Hendo 2.0 and the Lexus Hoverboard.