Popular Science: 100 years ago, scientists thought we’d be eating food made from air

From my What a Difference a Century Makes—or Not column on Pop Sci

100 years later, we've almost figured out how.

In the early 1920s, on the left bank of the Seine just outside Paris, a small laboratory garden bloomed on a plot of land sandwiched between the soaring Paris Observatory and the sprawling grounds of Chalais Park. Unlike a typical garden filled with well-groomed plants and the smell of fresh-turned soil, this garden had an industrial feel. Dubbed “the Garden of Wonders” by a contemporary journalist, the plot was lined with elevated white boxes fed with water from large glass canisters. Nearby greenhouses included equally unusual accessories. But it’s what happened inside the low-slung laboratory buildings that made this garden so wondrous...

100 years ago, scientists thought we'd be eating food made from air

Many thanks to Sarah Durn, Popular Science Associate Editor.

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