Monday, August 27, 2007

Fuller's Traveling Cartridge (circa 1960s)

This concept drawing by Buckminster Fuller looks to have a lot in common with the airport of the future article we looked at last week.


The illustration was found in the excellent 1968 book Transportation in the World of the Future.

See also:
Airport of the Future (1967)
Disney's Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)
The Most Well-Documented Lives in History
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5 comments:

  1. Mark PlusAugust 27, 2007 at 11:10 PM

    I went through a couple phases of enthusiasm for Buckminster Fuller in my life, but with the hindsight of nearly a quarter century after his death, I can see that his career hasn't amounted to much. Geodesic Domes don't work as practical shelters; people don't want to live in aluminum and glass houses hanging from central masts like bicycle wheels; Fuller's neoplatonic theorizing about "synergetics" and "design science" sounds like gibberish for valid reasons, etc. For such an allegedly important inventor, Fuller's tangible inventions remain conspicuously absent from people's lives in the real 21st Century.

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  2. Rangachari AnandAugust 28, 2007 at 8:22 AM

    I can see that these cartridges would work fine for short distance travel like commuting.

    For longer distance trips - what about bathrooms or food service?

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  3. AnonymousAugust 28, 2007 at 10:54 AM

    Yeah, I can see trying to evacuate an airliner crammed full of travel pods...

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  4. SamAugust 29, 2007 at 11:13 AM

    This 'system' or something similar too it is featured in start of the mid ninties anime Armitage the Third.

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  5. AnonymousAugust 29, 2007 at 9:27 PM

    I like the plane idea. You could just eject the pods over their destinations as the plane flies cross country. Kind of like a flying pez dispenser.

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