paleofuture

This Week in Time Capsules: Teaching Kids About the Cruel March of Time

This week in our round-up of time capsule news we have a 20-year-old McDonald’s capsule that only 90s kids will understand, a “time barrel” in Maine, and kids in the UK who learn that we eventually get old and die. Kids bury capsule at elderly care facility with predictions for 2064 A group of schoolchildren…

“In 2000 the younger readers of this article, who will then be in their seventies, will probably be inhabiting a world in which the old are provided with opportunities for using their experience and remaining strength in ways satisfactory to themselves, and valuable to the community.” — Aldous Huxley in the January 1950 issue of…

1944’s Big Screen TV of the Future Wasn’t Much Bigger Than a MacBook

With the nation focused on World War II, Americans of the early 1940s understood that they’d have to wait until peacetime for all their shiny new futuristic gadgets to arrive—including the TVs of the future, shown above in illustrations from the Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corporation. If you can believe it, these were the big…

IBM Sponsored a Major Hollywood Movie About Computers in 1957

In the sixth chapter of his 2010 book The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan L. Ensmer looks back at the 1957 movie Desk Set within the context of 1950s computing and the fear that one day we’d all be replaced by machines: What is less widely remembered about Desk Set is that it was sponsored…

10 Clinton-Era Predictions For the Future That Were Pretty Damn Close

Remember 1996? Bill Clinton was president, they finally nabbed the Unabomber, and Alanis Morissette was blowing up the charts with a fundamental misunderstanding of the word ironic. Simpler times, really. Many Americans actually thought that the future was looking pretty bright from the vantage point of 1996. The economy was doing well, the internet was…

BBC America’s New Show Looks at “The Real History of Science Fiction”

BBC America has a new show debuting next month called “The History of Science Fiction.” And it looks pretty neat. The first episode airs on Saturday, April 19th at 10pm EST. From BBC America: From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors…

The Man Who Tried to Invent the Like Button in the 1930s

Think Facebook invented the Like button? Think again. Back in the 1930s one man hoped to create a device that could send feedback to radio stations with the push of a button. He called it the “radiovota.” Get it? The radio… voter. Dr. Nevil Monroe Hopkins, pictured above left, was a research engineer and lecturer…

Do These Powerlaces Match My Hoverboard?

Hadley Freeman over at The Guardian has declared that Back to the Future is this season’s big fashion trend. Which makes complete sense, right? It’s almost the year 2015—the very year that Marty visits in the BTTF sequel—so bring on those Nike powerlaces and hoverboard-friendly sneakers! Or not. Unfortunately, Freeman’s not really talking about the…

These Poor Naive Canadians Thought The Internet Would Be Polite

Every new communications technology has that honeymoon period where a select group of people embraces it as the key to utopia. And then come the trolls. Even early radio had miscreants who would send out false distress signals. The people least prepared for their trollish ways? Canadians. The Huffington Post has dug up a CBC…

This 1920s Shockwatch Was Like a Taser For Your Wrist

While those of us here in the early 21st century argue over the future of smartwatches and smart rings, inventors of the 1920s would probably think we’re all a bunch of babies. Sure, your Pebble might have caller ID. But can it incapacitate a potential mugger with a 10,000 volt high frequency shock? I didn’t…

Glenn Beck Is Making a Movie About Edison and Tesla

Former Fox News TV personality Glenn Beck is really sick of talking about politics. So what rustles his jimmies these days? The mythologized feud between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Beck even has a movie in production about Edison that he hopes will “expose the truth” about this “bad man.” From National Review: Another film…

22 Incredible Images Show What the Future Looked Like 100 Years Ago

These amazing, almost 100-year old covers of the weekly French magazine Le Petite Journal are from the online collection of the french National Library. They show what were the most exciting innovations of the 1920s, and how people in Europe imagined the future of technology and science. The locomotion of tomorrow Image: Le Petit Journal…

1995: Artist’s concept painting of a future expedition on Mars’ moon Phobos. The explorer on the left is using a personal spacecraft which is anchored to the soil, while the explorer on the right examines a boulder that might weigh 1,000 pounds on Earth, and just a pound on Phobos. [Illustration by Pat Rawlings for…

This Week in Time Capsules: Redditor Wants to Bury Dogecoins

It was a particularly weird week for time capsules. Everybody’s trying to figure out where those 19th century coins came from, a town in Australia is debating whether they should open a 1994 capsule with old photos of Keith Urban, and one Redditor is trying to bury some dogecoins. Seriously. Much capsule. Very time. Wow.…

The Cartoonist of the Future’s Dynamo Drawing Machines

The cartoonist of the future wouldn’t have to lift a finger, thanks to tomorrow’s wonderful machines. At least that was the idea behind this 1923 cartoon by H.T. Webster. Americans of the 1920s saw a tremendous explosion in residential electricity adoption. At the start of the decade just 35 percent of Americans had electricity in…

The Most Retro-Futuristic DMV in America

In 1979, two artists covered a Southern California building with futuristic murals. They painted moon motorcycles, high-tech highways, and spaceships that would look right at home in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as delightfully retro-futuristic as the building is on the outside, what happens inside may surprise you. It’s the Culver City DMV. Artists…

That Fake Hoverboard Was Just a Funny or Die Stunt

Funny or Die has finally admitted to being behind that confusing fake hoverboard video that went viral yesterday. And we’re still not quite sure why they made it. “If we inspired on person to get into the hover sciences, I consider that a victory,” Christopher Lloyd says to the camera. “Here’s to hoverboards being actually…

This 1930 Song About 1992 Didn’t Mention Kurt Cobain Even Once

In 1930 Arthur Fields and Fred Hall recorded a song about the futuristic world of 1992. And if you can believe it, they didn’t mention a single grunge band. Not even once. No Soundgarden. No Nirvana. These supposedly future-minded charlatans didn’t even give a passing mention to Eddie Vedder. Then what were these guys yammering…

What Is This Fake Hoverboard Company Actually Promoting?

In 1989 the director of Back to the Future II went on TV and declared that hoverboards were real. “They’ve been around for years, it’s just that parents’ groups have not let the toy manufacturers make them,” Robert Zemeckis insisted. “But we got our hands on some and we put them in the movie.” This,…

Unlocking the Mystery of the $10 Million California Time Capsule

An anonymous Northern California couple out walking their dog recently discovered six rusty canisters buried on their property. The canisters were filled with 19th century gold coins, worth about $10 million today. Who’s responsible for that much buried treasure? You might just be looking at him. Several theories have emerged about the Saddle Ridge time…