Matt Novak

The November 24, 1930 Jefferson City Post-Tribune (Jefferson City, MO) ran this advertisement for an insurance company which assured readers that there would be no need for their services in the future. But until that day comes -- when traffic officers have nothing to do but knit, the flaws of human nature have vanished and automobiles glide silently and safely -- buy Aetna insurance!

Some day traffic officers will have nothing more to mind than their own knitting! Some day the modern automobile will glide silently, swiftly, hither and yon, marvelously protected by undreamed of devices for comfrot and safety. Some day the flaws in human nature will vanish as the morning dew before the rising sun, SOME DAY, but until the millennium -- ATENAIZE ! !

The AETNA COMBINATION AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE POLICY protects you ALL WAYS -- ALWAYS. No matter where an accident may occur or a claim develop -- an AETNA representative, of whom there are 25,000 from COAST-TO-COAST, is there to look out for your interests.

Let us explain this special feature of AETNA COAST-TO-COAST SERVICE TO YOU! ! ! YOUR LOCAL AETNAIZERS -- THE MEN WORTH KNOWING

Previously on Paleo-Future: 

• Have You A Little Robot? (1929)
• Robots Will Kill Music! (1930)

The May 9, 1897 St. Paul Globe (St. Paul, MN) ran an interesting article titled, "Strange Ships That Sail In The Skies." The article describes proposed flying vessels of the future, as well as newspapers around the United States that had were printing questionable accounts of flying machines already in use. Many of the illustrations from the article are similar to the flying machines we looked at from 1885.

I had no idea that so many newspapers reported -- with questionable intentions -- flying vessels throughout the country. If that's true, I imagine someone has written a book on this late-19th century phenomenon, no?

Mechanical Birds: Dreams of Flight in 19th Century Journalism. See? I already came up with a title for you. Go write the book. Yes, I'm looking at you. Just write it. I promise to buy a copy. But if you really want your non-fiction book to sell, make sure to put "...The Blankity Blank That Changed America Forever" in your subtitle. You'll thank me later. When you're rolling around in piles of money. Cuz that's a million dollar idea.

You can read, "Strange Ships That Sail In The Skies," in its entirety on Scribd.

This is the age of the airship. The evolution of the balloon to the flying machine is nearly complete, and it is not improbably that within a few years great aerial vessels for passenger service and monster engines of war and commerce will be seen sailing through space.

Recently the newspapers of the whole country have been exploiting stories of airships seen hovering over various towns and country places in districts very far apart. The testimony seems impeachable, especially in the face of so many witnesses, but certain details are always lacking to complete the evidence. Now it is a story of a wonderful vessel seen on the Pacific coast in the neighborhood of San Francisco or maybe Sacramento. Next a report comes of one having been seen in Nebraska, or a farmer in some Iowa county reports seeing a bright light and moving object in the air on a dark night. Then the scene shifts, and a man or a score of men report seeing a wonderful what is it from some other remote quarter of the United States.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Flying Machines (circa 1885)
• Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)

The May, 1969 issue of Science Journal features an article by Dr. Rodney Wendell Johnson about lunar colonies of the future. Dr. Johnson was the Advanced Planner for NASA's Advanced Manned Mission Program Office. The illustrations by Roy G. Scarfo that accompany the article are pretty amazing.

(Please excuse the semi-blurred scans. The magazine is too big to fit comfortably on my scanner and frankly I'm too lazy to scan it in pieces for you. Listen, you complain any more and I'll turn this rocket ship right around! I swear!)

[The illustration above] shows a semi-permanent base, a six man shelter landed by a direct flight from Earth and coupled to an expandable laboratory in the foreground.

Early lunar bases would grow from Apollo hardware. The picture [above], depicts Apollo lunar modules; that in the background carries a shelter and the other has landed a one man roving vehicle with a range of 8 km. This system would permit 14 day scientific missions in 1971-72, including geological drilling to about 35 m.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Winchell Chung for tracking down the illustrator of these great pieces as Roy G. Scarfo, who also illustrated the book Beyond Tomorrow: The Next 50 Years in Space.]

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• The Challenge of Outer Space (circa 1950s)
• Von Braun's Blueprint for Space (1950s)
• Man and the Moon (1955)
• Space Suit (1956)
• The Complete Book of Space Travel (1956)
• Rocket Ship (1956)
• Mars and Beyond (1957)
• Exploring Space (1958)
• Closer Than We Think! Space Coveralls (1960)
• Space and National Security (1963)
• Air Force Predictions for 2063 (1963)
• Moon Settlement by 2007 (1985)

The September 11, 1960 edition of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think envisioned a type of disaster response vehicle that could seemingly accomplish many of the things people still complain about whenever governments respond to crises. With a decimated infrastructure those "terra tires" (crushing cars, mind you) would certainly come in handy. It's interesting that the illustration gives no clue as to what horror these people must be running from; an uncharacteristically chilling image from pop-utopian Radebaugh.

Tomorrow's methods of coping with catastrophes will make our present-day equipment as obsolete as the horse-drawn drays that handled the San Francisco fire havoc in 1906.

New king-size disaster wagons will face up to any kind of upheaval -- atomic, atmospheric or volcanic. Their low-pressure "terra tire" doughnut wheels will permit movement across any kind of terrain, traffic or wreckage. Supplies will include hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals, blood, dehydrated food and the like.

Such wagons are now in the planning stage for military purposes. Compare also the enormous vehicles already in use as missile carriers, also those used in the mining and logging industries.

Next week: Sub Squelcher

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
• Will War Drive Civilization Underground? (1942)
• Technology and Man's Future (1972)
• Newton the Household Robot (1989)

This illustration by Alexander Leydenfrost appeared in the fiftieth anniversary issue of Popular Mechanics (January, 1952). It depicts "science on the march" and even includes a chart explaining the various elements of the image.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Atomic Power Plant of the Future (1939)
• The Domination of Space (1950s)
• The Future of the Helicopter (1955)
• Our Friend the Atom (Book, 1956)
• Disney's Magic Highway (1958)
• Nuclear-Powered Aircraft (1960)

Last month we looked at this photo in a book of 1960's advertisements. It's not immediately clear what women in space helmets have to do with refrigerators, but like we've discussed, positioning a product as "futuristic" means that as a consumer you're able to "buy tomorrow."

Own a piece of the future... with our widget.

Today we have an ad that looks to be from that same Frigidaire campaign. It appeared in the May 5, 1966 issue of Life magazine and touts the Gemini 19 refrigerator-freezer. I'm at a loss trying to think of products today that might co-opt language of the space age. When did the idea of living in space lose its luster?

Ad via Flickr and Google Books.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• "And This Button Annihilates the City" (1965)
• Refrigerators... In Space! (1965)
• 1999 A.D. (1967)

It doesn't get much better than saucy French futurism, does it? These illustrations of futuristic flying machines from 1901 are quite similar to both the German and French personal flying machines we've looked at from this era.

I find the electric lights adorning her hat and dress quite beautiful. Early electric light and the way it was described in such poetic terms at the turn of the twentieth century truly leaves me in awe. Strangely enough, I caught myself asking, "but where is the power source for those lights?!?!!" all the while ignoring how absurd a system of dangerously placed propellors and wings would be for human flight. 

If my universal language translator can be trusted (actually, I used Babelfish), "au siecle prochain," means "in the next century," and "comment on suivra les femmes," translates to, "how women will be followed." The illustration below appears to be of a lover making his hasty escape out the window, as madame's husband arrives home. 

Below are images from previous blog posts on German postcards (circa 1900) and French prints (1910). A special thanks to Scott Lesch for the black and white images above.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Flying Machines (circa 1885)
• Boy's Flying Machine of the Twentieth Century (1900)
• Postcards Show The Year 2000 (circa 1900)
• French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)
• What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years (Ladies Home Journal, 1900)

As you might recall, the booklet 2063 A.D. was sealed in the General Dynamics time capsule in 1963 and contains predictions about what advancements we will see in space by the year 2063. Today we have the (rather succinct) predictions of Dr. William H. Pickering, President of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics:

My "100 year forecast" as follows:

1. There will be travel at relativistic velocities to the nearby stars with manned spacecraft which will explore other planetary systems.
2. There will be permanent scientific colonies at various places throughout the solar systems.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• General Dynamics Astronautics Time Capsule (1963)
• Lyndon B. Johnson on 2063 A.D. (1963)
• Edmund G. Brown's Californifuture (1963)
• James B. Utt on Space Travel (1963)
• Air Force Predictions for 2063 (1963)

The 1981 children's book World of Tomorrow: School, Work and Play accurately predicted the rise of debit cards, but may have overstated how much safer we would be in the futuristic world of 2002. The phrase, "in tomorrow's world computers will be able to guard over us," might seem humorous, given our current fears about online identity theft and high tech hegemony.

But per usual, I tip my hat to the techno-utopian authors and illustrators of the 1980s who promised kids like myself a pretty incredible future. Well, I guess when those same authors and illustrators weren't making us soil our Underoos with tales of the coming robot uprising.

Computers and robots will certainly be able to make life easier for you in the future - by allowing you to work, learn and shop at home, for example. But they also improve your life in several other ways, and one of the most important is that they will make your life safer than it is today.

Even if you're lucky enough to have escaped harm, you probably know of someone who has had a car crash or been robbed. However, in tomorrow's world computers will be able to guard over us. Let's follow a day in the future and find out how.

Imagine that you want to go into a city from your country home to watch a sports event. You leave your car at the city parking lot and then complete your journey by autotaxi and beltways. All these transports are guided and controlled by computers so that you travel in perfect safety. But you have to pay for your autotaxi ride, the sports match and a meal afterwards. Nevertheless, you walk about confident that no one will try to rob you. How can you be so sure?

 The answer is simple: you do not carry any money on you and neither does anyone else. You pay for everything you buy with an identity card like a credit card. it has a magnetic strip containing your name and other personal information in the form of a magnetic code that the computers in the autotaxi, the stadium and the restaurant can read. They simply contact your bank's computer and ask it to pay them the sums of money due to them. This done instantly, and you can check how much money you have left in your back account at any time.

But someone might try to steal your card and use it to pay for anything they want. This would be now use, because you have to authorize every payment by giving the computer a secret code number or code word. Or the computer may check your thumbprint or voice to make sure that it is dealing with you and not someone pretending to be you.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Credit Card Rings (1964)
• Computer Criminals of the Future (1981)
• Time Travel (1982)
• Robot Rebellion (1982)

With every important technological innovation a vocal group of people become alarmed that their industry will be adversely effected by it. People are understandably terrified when it seems like a new technology will put them out of a job. However, throughout the twentieth century, we've seen that the people who succeed in times of transition are those able to adapt to technology rather than fight against it.

Techno-reactionaries of the 1930s complained that automation and "robots" were going to put people out of work, and we hear identical cries today. But what is the "robot" of 2010? The Internet, of course!

Writer Andrew Keen claims that websites like YouTube have "infiltrated and infected" America, putting hardworking people out of jobs by giving a voice to the amateurs rather than those who have been the traditional media gatekeepers. In Keen's 2007 book, The Cult of the Amateur, he accuses the Internet and Web 2.0 culture of crippling the entire media industry; from newspapers to recorded music. What really gets me about Keen is his moral outrage over technology and the fearmongering that goes along with it, but I'll save that for another post.

Below is an ad from the Music Defense League that appeared in the November 24, 1930 Jefferson City Post-Tribune (Jefferson City, MO). The advertisement uses a robotic villian; a physical representation of the recorded or "canned" music that was starting to be used in theatres of the era. From the vantage point of 2010 it's a rather hilarious idea, because what is the institution of today being "destroyed" by new technology? Recorded music!

Efficiencies in distribution brought about by the Internet mean that moving recorded music around the world is simple and inexpensive. Any scarcity in newly recorded music is artificial because you no longer have to go to a store and pay for plastic discs to enjoy the music you like. As has always been the case, the innovators will thrive and those who try to put up artificial barriers will become irrelevant and die off.

Viva la technologie, etc.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Movie Theater of the Future (1930)
• Robots vs. Musicians (1931)
• A Whole World of Metal Men? (1937)
• 'Brain Wave' Music Possible (1949)
• Will Robots Make People Obsolete? (1959)
• Technology and Man's Future (1972)
• Future Shock (1972)
• Headlines of the Near Future (1972)

In The Ground

remixed: Georgia Sothern

music: “The Dethbridge in Lethbridge” by The Rural Alberta Advantage

by Matt Novak

No One Does It Like You

remixed: 1959 Disneyland TV episode “Eyes in Outer Space”

music: “No One Does It Like You” by Department of Eagles

by Matt Novak