Yesterday’s visions of today were surprisingly accurate in some cases, but in others, they were humorously off-base. We’re not zooming around our moon colony homes in jet packs, confirming our choice in mates with scientific body odour tests, or enjoying our favourite TV shows via implants in our brains. These 12 predicted gadgets and inventions never came to be, and while we’ll never need robotic cargo horses for our milkmen, we’re still eagerly waiting for those hoverboards. See lots more fabulous retro-futurism at the Smithsonian Magazine blog, Paleofuture.
1. The iPad of 1935
In the April 1935 issue of the magazine Everyday Science and Mechanics, the ‘next logical step in the world of publishing’ was envisioned: a mechanical microfilm reader mounted on a large pole that would theoretically allow you to sit back in your armchair and scroll through the pages of a book with the push of a button. Of course, unlike the modern iPad, which offers the same function, it’s not exactly portable - much less so than the book sitting on the table right next to the illustrated man.
2. Newspaper Printed by Your Home Radio
As envisioned in the 1930s and 1960s using radio and satellite technology, respectively, the future of newspapers would involve home printing machines that spit out the day’s news automatically each morning and evening. Philco-Ford’s Newspaper Printer, featured in an episode of the CBS show ‘The 21st Century’ entitled ‘At Home, 2001′, “provides a summary of news relayed by satellite from all over the world,” says narrator Walter Cronkite. “Now to get a newspaper copy for permanent reference I just turn this button, and out it comes. When I’ve finished catching up on the news I might check the latest weather. This same screen can give me the latest reports on the stocks I might own.”
3. Scientific Mate Tests
How can you determine whether you will have a successful marriage? According to an April 1924 issue of Science and Invention magazine about scientific love matching, you simply hook yourself up to a mating machine that measures your physical attraction and sympathy for your chosen partner. Recording the pulses of couples and checking their breathing while they embrace, and making sure they feel ‘sympathetic enough’ while watching their partner undergo an unpleasant procedure like having their blood drawn may not sound all that outrageous, but two other tests were even stranger. In the Body Odour Test, one partner is placed inside a capsule while the other is asked to take a sniff; if they don’t find the smells too objectionable, they’re probably a good match. The Nervous Disorder test aims to find out whether couples are too nervous around each other by testing their reaction to a surprise gunshot in the air.
4. Automated Farms
Throughout the 20th century, visions of the future often assumed that our 21st century lives would be full of leisure thanks to machines and automated processes. By the year 2000, they figured we’d only have to work for part of the week, and robots would do all the hardest labour. Radio-controlled farm robots, as envisioned in the syndicated comic strip Closer Than We Think!, would virtually eliminate the need for manual labour in fields. And in the March 1931 issue of Country Gentleman, the ‘farmer of the year 2031′ tends his farm virtually from a large flat-panel television.
5. Jet Packs for Soldiers and Personal Transport
Jet packs (as seen here on James Bond) were a frequent component of futuristic technology, first emerging in the sci-fi of the 1920s and soaring in popularity by the 1960s when they were actually invented (sort of.) While jet packs do exist, they’re definitely nowhere near practical usage as personal transport or military reconnaissance. Aside from a few public demonstrations, they’re most commonly used by astronauts in outer space, where the challenges of Earth’s atmosphere and gravity don’t exist.
6. Headphone Television
Television represented one of the biggest technological advances of the 20th century that was actually accessible to many average people, making its evolution a major source of speculation, from the first rumours of its existence to the days when it finally became a fixture in most homes. People began to envision long-distance visual communication as soon as the telephone was invented, and some predictions - like video chat, tiny TV sets, flat-panels and interactive programs - were right on the mark. Others, like TVs that emit smells - not so much. One concept from the comic strip Closer Than We Think! imagines television receivers that are implanted right into the brain, creating images directly in the mind, “like dreams.”
7. Automated Cooking with Plates Made on Demand
Another advancement detailed in the ‘At Home, 2001′ episode of The 21st Century with Walter Cronkite was fully automatic meal preparation in which meals made from ‘frozen or irradiated foods’ are programmed into a menu and prepared by a robotic chef. An entire meal could be chosen and prepared within seconds. But the weirdest part of this speculation has to do with the tableware rather than the food. Instead of getting plates from the cupboard, the robot would instantly mould plastic into plates, cups and bowls for one-time use, and then melt them back down when you’re done. The point? Not having to wash dishes. Although 3D printed plates are nearly possible today, this whole process seems fairly ridiculous and energy-intensive when dishes could simply be loaded into a magical dishwashing machine.
8. Medical Examination Machines
In a series looking at the technology in every episode of “The Jetsons” TV show from the original 1962-1964 season, the Smithsonian blog Paleofuture looks at how the show reflected the expectations of the time. One episode has George swallow a prober capsule that travels around the inside of his body and transmits pictures to a television screen. Diagnostic imaging has made leaps and bounds since the ’50s, when manual film processing threw a major wrench into the whole process. But we’re still a long way away from automated medical examination booths where we slip into an instrumented suit to get a physical, with a computer analyzing all of our basic bodily functions and automatically printing out prescriptions. This concept was envisioned in the January 1960 edition of the Sunday comic strip Our New Age.
9. Flying Platforms
Jet packs weren’t the only invention that would finally give human beings the ability to fly with little more than their own bodies. Personal flight machines seemed inevitable, with single-person helicopters expected to be as common as bicycles. One idea presented in the April 1955 issue of Pacific Stars and Stripes was this flying platform, a wingless circular platform with two fans that rotate in opposite directions to produce an air blast that lifts and propels it. They figured that not only would this machine serve as an assault boat for individual soldiers, it would also be “the businessman’s speedy coupe of the future.”
10. The Milkman’s Robot Helper
In the early 1960s, technology ponderers could envision a future with automated vehicles, but not one without milkmen. In the 1920s, nearly all milk consumed in the United States was delivered directly to the home, but that number dwindled steadily over the decades as refrigerators became more common and suburbanization made delivery less convenient. The August 6, 1961 edition of the Sunday comic strip Closer Than We Think! imagines that the milkman of the future would have an automatic robot helper called an ‘electronic dobbin’ packed with glass bottles. The milkman would be on foot, guiding the robot with a remote control.
11. Hoverboards
How many of us watched Back to the Future II as kids and stared in wide-eyed wonder at Marty McFly’s hoverboard, thinking the day when we’d have our own was just around the corner? “Let’s face it, we’re never getting our hoverboards,” moaned Slate in a November 2012 article, debunking rumours that working prototypes actually exist. The movie was set in the year 2015, but it’s looking unlikely that the technology will really be developed in time. Claims of working hoverboards have turned out to be either hoaxes or versions of hovercraft vehicles that don’t have the same capabilities as the Back to the Future hoverboard. Want one that looks exactly like Marty’s? You can have an actual prop from the film for just US$30,000. Too bad it’s just a piece of pink plastic.
12. Intelligence-Improving Computers That Connect to Our Brains
Athelstan Spilhaus’ predictions in a 1965 edition of the comic strip Our New Age may not be entirely serious, but they’re still laughably far off the mark today: the artist imagined that by 2016, we’d be able to improve our intelligence with magic smart pills and by hooking our brains directly to computers. Of course, the next prediction in that strip is that by 2056, our holiday dinners cooked by robots could be served to us by friendly, intelligent animals trained to be household helpers - including kangaroos.
