paleofuture

99 Things That Robots Were Supposed to Be Doing by Now

Humanoid robots are still relatively primitive here in the 21st century. Sure, we have Roombas that can vacuum our floors and Boston Dynamics robots that are doing backflips. But when it comes to the dream of our own personal robot servant, we’re still in the Dark Ages. You can’t go down to Costco and pick…

How a U.S. Military Contractor Wanted to Use Jetpacks in the Vietnam War

When you think of jetpacks, your first thought is probably an image of some fun, care-free piece of pop culture like The Jetsons or James Bond. Or maybe even the Super Bowl. But jetpacks were serious business for the U.S. military in the 1960s. And, believe it or not, there were plenty of futuristic ideas…

Predictions for the Year 2018 From the 20th Century

It’s the year 2018. And while we have some very cool tech that we take for granted, we’re still waiting on quite a few things that we were promised. But what did the people of yesteryear imagine 2018 would be like? People of 20th century had a lot of ideas about what the year 2018…

The Year 2000 Is Officially Retro

I’m calling it. The year 2000 is officially retro. Fight me. Half of you are probably thinking it’s long overdue. While the other half likely still automatically calculate dates by counting backwards from 2000. How long ago was the year 1970? Just 30 years if you use the shorthand I’ve used for so much of…

This Was the Bicycle of the Future in 1946

This bicycle, designed by Benjamin Bowden, was included in the “Britain Can Make It Better” exhibition of 1946. Known simply as the Classic (and later the Spacelander), Bowden’s initial design for the bicycle included a motor that gave riders a little extra oomph while traveling uphill. Bowden’s streamlined design was said to represent what the…

LA’s Futuristic Torpedo Cars Were Supposed to Fix The Traffic Problem

According to the LA Times in 1923, it took streetcars 30 minutes to move just six blocks in downtown LA that summer. The automobile had invaded the city, and the streetcars were owned by private companies that didn’t want to spend any money on improvements. The dream? Elevating mass transit, like in the 1923 model…

7 Real Products That Get Their Names From Dystopian Fiction

We all use dystopian movies and books to make sense of our world. Whether it’s Brave New World, 1984, or The Hunger Games, dystopian fiction serves as a common touchpoint to talk about our fears. But what happens when companies knowingly embrace the dark side of futurism and start naming products after the things we…

Grandpa had a horse. Father, a horseless carriage. Today —and tomorrow— you will have wings. — Print ad circa 1946 for Alcoa Aluminum via X-Ray Delta Too bad many of those postwar dreams — from personal flying machines to miracle houses — weren’t delivered on.

Holga is Bringing Back Lo-Fi Photography With a Digital Twist

In an age when anyone with a smartphone and a steady hand can get a perfectly focused, well-lit shot, lo-fi photos feel a bit passé. But if Holga Digital has anything to say about it, blown-out shots with fuzzy vignettes are about to become all the rage on hipster Instagram feeds. That’s right: Holga, the…

12 Fantastic Scifi Vehicles from a Century Ago

Electric airships, submarines, and other futuristic vessels were the main attractions on the covers of a pulp novel series called Frank Reade Weekly Magazine: Containing Stories of Adventures on Land, Sea & in the Air. The Smithsonian Libraries’s tumblr has just posted some of the best examples of these paleofuturist transportation devices. They explain: The…

Photo Essay: Inside a 120 Year-Old Steam Powered Water Pumping Station

A small village on the left bank of the river Tisza in Hungary hides one of the best-preserved industrial relics I have ever seen. If you wander along the flood prevention dyke near the village, you’ll see an old building with an enormous brick chimney towering above the trees: this is the old Tiszabercel water…

This Rotary Dial Smartphone Hack Fills Me With Glee

Rotary dials are one of my favorite UI devices. I like the force feedback they provide as you spin a number in, and the sound they make as the dial zips back into position. At last, I can have that feeling every time I make a call, using Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak’s crazy DiY rotary…

Amazing Video Tour of a 1985 Home Automation System

YouTuber Avboden has a home automation system from 1985, and he recently created this video to show people how it worked. It actually has a pretty great UI, with touchscreen — and it even allows you to give commands from your 1980s ultra-modern, push-button phone. Watching this actually begs the question of why we haven’t…

The Fitness Wearable So Dangerous It Was Supposed to Be Destroyed

One of the first-ever fitness wearables was so dangerous it was banned by the US government for causing miscarriages and hernias. The line between “convenient exercise device” and “ornate torture tool” was thinner back in the 1950s. Before it was outed as medically horrifying, the Relax-A-Cizor was marketed as an easy way to get thin…

Faxpapers: A Lost 1930s Technology That Delivered Newspapers via Radio

One of the greatest media experiments of the 1930s and 40s was the faxpaper. Almost entirely forgotten today, it was a technology that could deliver newspapers over the radio waves, then print them instantly right in your home. When we think about the evolution of mass media, it usually goes something like this: First came…

6 Technologies That Have Always Been “Just Two Years Away”

It’s almost here, guys! Flying cars! Jetpacks! Hoverboards! Or so we’ve been promised. It seems these technologies are always just two years away. At least that’s what the media keeps telling us. Today we’re looking at promises for the near-future that haven’t quite arrived yet. We want so desperately to believe that they’re just over…

The 1920s Tabloid Reporter Who Predicted TV Could Kill Newspapers

“What for example could be staler than to-morrow morning’s newspaper account of a prize-fight or political convention one has already received over the radio?” wrote one commentator in 1928. Radio was overtaking print as the news medium of the day and some people insisted that newspapers were going to disappear completely. And with that, “serious”…

Is the Government Responsible For Sheltering You From Nukes?

“EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT SHELTERS” proclaimed Life magazine in its January 12, 1962 issue. Specifically, everybody was talking about nuclear fallout shelters, since both the United States and the Soviet Union had developed weapons which could unleash unimaginable destruction upon the Earth. The living might envy the dead if nuclear war broke out between the two…

Here’s How One Optimistic Parent From 1989 Imagined 2014

Is it cruel to have children when the world is so terrible? That’s not a new question. And when a newspaper columnist in Michigan asked it in 1989, he came down on the side of no. The world of the future — the world of 2014, to be exact — was going to be just…

January 2000: Truck concept vehicle from Ford called “The 24.7” featuring technologies like internet, hands-free mobile phone, real-time route assistance, weather reports and stock read-outs. [Getty Images]