Walt Disney and City Planning

"Imagineers said that when they were planning Tomorrowland, Walt would carry around books on city planning and mutter about traffic, noise, and neon signs, and he kept three volumes in his office to which he frequently referred: Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Sir Ebenezer Howard (originally published in 1902 and reissued in 1965), which promoted a vision of a more pastoral urban life; and The Heart of Our Cities and Out of a Fair, a City, both by an architect and mall designer name Victor Gruen, who urged the reconceptualization of the city as more ordered, rational and humane."

(excerpted from p. 608 in Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler)

Also, it looks like a new 2007 edition of Garden Cities of Tomorrow just came out.

Ristos (1979)

As promised, here is page 12 of the amazing 1979 book Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century.

My favorite aspect of this page is that not only are they speculating the coming of the radio-telephone wristwatch, they're speculating its nickname. The "risto" may not be a common sight today but I really wish my cell phone had "pop-out aerials."

Also, check out the "instant voting" they anticipate one could do through their "risto." I certainly forsee no problems with that. Electronic voting machines are pretty widely accepted as reliable in 2007, right?

Stay tuned, this book is over 30 pages of paleo-future goodness.

Monowheel

Paleo-Future reader artbot recently turned my attention to the monowheel, the awkward contraption featured on the 1932 Popular Science cover on the right and the photograph below.

Sometimes the promise of the paleo-future can give us all wonderfully hilarious visuals such as the excerpt from Wikipedia featured below. It gets us acquainted with the dangers of "gerbiling."

"In most designs, if the driver accelerates or brakes too hard, it is possible that the force applied overcomes the force of gravity keeping the rider at the bottom of the wheel, sending the rider spinning around the inside of the wheel. This is known as gerbiling, because it has some similarity to the situation of a gerbil running too quickly inside of a hamster wheel."


For more great monowheel pictures, (albeit none with gerbiling), check out this site.

AT&T "You Will" (1993)

The AT&T "You Will" televison ads from 1993 are a great example of how the future was once sold to the public. While the user interfaces may be different, most of the innovations they advertise "you will" be doing have come true in 2007.

I guess I don't yet have a keyless lock on my door. Any guesses on how long before keys are replaced in mainstream society?

Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century (1979)

Examining the cover to the 1979 book Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century you can instantly feel its paleo-futuristic glow. With colonies in space, solar heated houses, amazing sports, (which obviously take place in freefall), and wristwatch TV it's almost too much for just one blog to handle, but we shall try. Stay tuned for more as we crack this book wide open in the coming weeks.


A special thanks to JesseM for turning me on to this book series after reading my post about the EPCOT book The Future World of Transporation.

Mars and Beyond (1957)

Walt Disney opens the Disneyland TV program Mars and Beyond by asking, "Will we find planets with only a low form of vegetable life or will there be mechanical robots controlled by super intelligent beings?"
"Even though scientists think Martian conditions are severe, they believe that if man journeyed to Mars he could survive here with moderate protection... life [on Mars] could be almost normal inside pressurized houses and pressurized cities."
"Today, as we face the problems of over-population and depletion of natural resources the possibility of Mars becoming a new frontier is of increasing importance in our plans for the future."
You can view a clip of the program here and you can find this program in its entirety on the DVD set Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond. The program originally aired on December 4, 1957 and was eventually released theatrically.

Journey Into Space (TIME Magazine, 1952)

"Pressure suits will improve, say the space doctors, but not enough to permit their wearers to work freely in a vacuum for long periods of time. Dr. Fritz Haber of the School of Space Medicine believes that the whole space-suit idea will have to be abandoned. If space men want to float around outside their space ship (as they did in the movie, Destination Moon), they will have to stay inside rigid cylinders and do their work by remote-control devices operated from inside."

The entire article from the December 8, 1952 issue of TIME magazine can be read here.

Monorails at Disneyland (1959 and 1960)

Stuff From the Park has some great vintage Disneyland photos including the one pictured above of the Monorails traveling over Submarine Lagoon from 1959. Gorillas Don't Blog also has some great old Disneyland pictures including the one below from 1960. I still wonder if all the Monorails in the respective Disney parks are considered by the general public to be transportation or a novelty attraction.

Champion Paper: Protecting You From the Tyrannical Future Government (Newsweek, 1979)

I came across a rather bizarre ad recently in the October 15, 1979 edition of Newsweek. It's for a company called Champion which now looks to be a part of the International Paper Company.

The ad is utterly perplexing.

"In the future, incredibly expensive technology could enable a few people to live for 200 years or more. Who will be chosen? And, who will choose?"

Why would a paper company take out such a bizarre ad? Because, "...we are a forest products company, and plant seeds that take up to 50 years to become mature trees, Champion International has to think a lot about the future."

A Glimpse of the Year 2000 (New York Times, 1982)

"'You will definitely see this returning to a more human scale society,' said Hazel Henderson, a freelance futurist, from her post in Gainesville, Fla. 'It will be more effecient [to] do things locally. It won't make sense to buy Wonder Bread baked in Illinois'"

That prediction couldn't have been more wrong. Today our food travels further than ever.

If you have a TimesSelect subscription you can read the entire article here.

Syd Mead

As a robot designer for Short Circuit, concept artist for Tron, a production illustrator for the first Star Trek movie and a "visual futurist" for Blade Runner, Syd Mead has contributed to the paleo-future through some amazing movies.

Flickrtarian Michael Heilemann recently posted a set of Syd Mead concept art. Be sure to check out the Paleo-Future Flickr group started by trixiebedlam.

Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)

Disney's 1937 animated short film, "Modern Inventions," opens with Donald Duck entering a Museum of Modern Marvels. Emphasizing automation and robots, the short has a lot in common with the Fleischer Brother's, "All's Fair at the Fair," which we looked at earlier in the week.

The museum is full of wonderfully ridiculous inventions from the future such as the pneumatic pencil sharpener, peanut sheller, robotic nurse maid, old razor blade mangler, robotic hitch-hiker's aid, potato peeler, the hydraulic potato peeler, mechanical bottle opener, and the automatic bundle wrapper.

You can watch a clip of "Modern Inventions" here and you can find the short on the DVD set Walt Disney Treasures - The Chronological Donald, Volume 1 (1934-1941).

More Space Colony Art (1970s)

The NASA Ames Research Center has more 1970s space colony artwork, some of which was featured last week in the post about Donald Davis.

Desolation Row (Color)

CantikFotos has posted a color photo of the amazing Desolation Row in Taiwan. Like the view from Google Maps the new image adds another level of paleo-futuristic wonder to the development.

What to do with all this leisure time? (1966)

"By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the U.S. will, in effect, be independently wealthy. With Government benefits, even nonworking families will have, by one estimate, an annual income of $30,000-$40,000 (in 1966 dollars). How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem, and Herman Kahn foresees a pleasure-oriented society full of 'wholesome degeneracy.'"

The entire article from the February 25, 1966 issue of TIME can be read here.

For the record, $40,000 in 1966 dollars is the equivalent of just under $250,000 in 2007 dollars, according to the Inflation Calculator.

Motorola Television (1961-1963)

The Motorola television ads below ran in Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post from 1961 until 1963. These, along with other print ads from the Golden Age of Television can be found in the book Window to the Future by Steve Kosareff. The illustrations posted here are all by Charles Schridde.

The illustrations all have a very clean look. The TV is obviously quite prominently displayed and people seem to be enjoying themselves. The boy in the aquarium intrigues me the most. Is he so enthralled by television that he can't stay away from it long enough to enjoy swimming in the futuristic pool attached to his house?

Jet Pack Video (1966)

A friend of mine contends that jet packs were the Segways of the 20th century. They promised to change the way that people traveled but were really just a novelty. I must confess that I find Segways fun, (no matter how nerdy I might look), and would love to try a jet pack if given the chance.

On second thought, I might let Buck Rogers have all the fun for now.

The Fearless Futurist (New York Times, 1968)

The September 5, 1968 New York Times had a book review titled, "The Fearless Futurist," about Amaury de Riencourt and his book, The American Empire. Riencourt's vision for the future may not seem altogether revolutionary for modern readers but I guess his was the most desired option in the Cold War-era world.

The journalist writes about Riencourt:
"All moaning doomsters to the contrary notwithstanding, the world is quite likely to go on. And as he sees it, the United States and the Soviet Union are one day going to run it fairly peaceably as something like twin-governesses, I gather, to the fractious children of the earth."

If you have a TimesSelect subscription you can read the entire article here.

All's Fair at the Fair (1938)

The world presented in the 1938 cartoon All's Fair at the Fair is one of automation and robots. We see the World's Fair through the eyes of an adoring couple, impressed by the promises of the future.

The future is full of robots, specializing in cutting hair, shaving, teaching humans to dance, and otherwise perfecting humanity. All's Fair at the Fair offers that special brand of optimism I imagine the world needed in 1938. We will explore the real-life versions of the paleo-futuristic World's Fairs in future posts. Check out the short cartoon here.

'Flying Saucer' Buses (1950)

I found the book Do You Remember Technology? at a used bookstore this weekend. It included this Science and Mechanics cover from the December, 1950 issue. Flying saucer buses? Maybe not the most practical cover for, "The Magazine That Shows You How," but certainly paleo-futuristic.

Men in Black Hate iTunes

Agent Kay: "This is a fascinating little gadget. These are going to replace CDs soon. I guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."

It's funny to think that a movie like Men in Black, produced just ten years ago, could not forsee the very rapid changes the music industry was about to go through. The CD was not eclipsed by something smaller, but rather something virtually invisible; digital files traversing the internet. It makes you wonder what the media landscape could look like in just another ten years. (Or fewer, if technology continues to progress exponentially.)

If iTunes goes DRM-free, like eMusic I certainly have no reason to ever buy a CD again.

Nuclear Holocaust Before 1999

Didn't think it could get any weirder? Someone has found an audio recording of Hal Lindsey lecturing about the "End Times" coming in the 1980s. The LP shares the same title as the book, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon but doesn't appear to be a direct reading from it.

Talking about the Russians
UFOs and the "Jupiter Effect"
"An all-out nuclear holocaust before 1999."

Many thanks to jayKayEss for links to the audio files.

EPCOT's Horizons

The EPCOT attraction Horizons was a great introduction into the world of paleo-futurism. The ride took you through past visions of the future as well as "present" visions of the future. For this ride the "present" meant 1983, the year it was built.

The ride was permanently closed in 1999 but Horizons is not completely lost. Some have posted video of the ride while others have posted the audio of the attraction in its entirety. Intercot has a complete video ride-through but it's a low-resolution RealPlayer file.

The photos posted are from the book Walt Disney's EPCOT Center: Creating the New World of Tomorrow and actually appear to be scale models likely produced before the ride even opened. One of the most memorable things about the ride was the smell of oranges during the "desert farm" scene pictured below.

The photo caption reads:

Horizon's ride-through attraction culminates in "Tomorrow's Windows," a revealing look into future living styles. This city apartment of the future, [above], boasts a spectacular view of the twenty-first-century skyline. While the man plays a "symphosizer," his wife chats with their daughter via holographic teleview. From the control pod of the desert farm, [below], a woman in a jumpsuit directs the work of robot harvesters. Her desert hovercar is parked behind the control pod.

Machines! Machines! (New York Times, 1927)

I recently found a New York Times article with the headline, "Machines, Machines! The Futurist's Cry!" from December 11, 1927.

The article quotes Signor Azari as saying, "[In the future] ....our food will have to be mainly synthetic and artificial - machine-made. The cities of the future will contain no useless garbage of trees and flowers or loathsome promiscuity of animals, but geometrical buildings in glass and armed cement. Above all, there will be machines, machines, machines!"

It is difficult to imagine the world of 1927, when there was considerable awe in witnessing simple tasks being performed by machines. The technology we take for granted in 2007 were the magical fantasies of 1927.

The article contends, "'Open Sesame' used to be a term belonging to magic: The masters of a machine age are robbing the fairy tale of its ancient glamour. Once it took a magician of considerable ability to lure obedience from things inanimate."

There seemed to be a very real fear that people's jobs were at stake:
"Machines....machines...machines. Two and two into the Ark of the modern world they come: Monsters that almost of themselves turn out the product of a great factory....."

Yet, there was an odd sense of optimism that machines could help the average worker:
"...by means of cunning mechanisms of many sorts we are everywhere freeing men's hands from the bondage of labor; causing to straighten the backs that are bent in toil."

If you have a TimesSelect subscription you can read the entire article.

Desolation Row

CantikFotos has a great collection of photos from Taiwan of a housing development that was never completed. The set is called Desolation Row and has a companion set called Desolation Row Redux.

Someone posted it to Digg back in July. I contacted the photographer and he didn't know the backstory to the development but "ahfoo" on Digg claims to have lived within walking distance of these buildings. Their theory, which seems most credible, was that a falling out between the business partners led to the development never being finalized.

You can see the development from above via Google Maps.

The Futurists of 1966 Looking Toward A.D. 2000

"Nearly all experts agree that bacterial and viral diseases will have been virtually wiped out. Probably arteriosclerotic heart disease will also have been eliminated. Cells have only a few secrets still hidden from probers, who are confident that before the year 2000 they will have found the secret that causes cancer. The most exciting, and to some the most frightening, prospect is the chemical and electrical treatment of the brain. Dr. David Krech, psychology professor at the University of California, believes that retarded infants will be diagnosed at birth, and chemical therapy will permit them to function as normal people. The memory loss accompanying senility will be eliminated."

The entire article from the February 25, 1966 issue of TIME can be read here.

Space Colonies by Don Davis

Donald Davis was commissioned to do paintings for NASA in the 1970s and is now offering them to the public domain. The "toroidal shaped space colony" above is an incredible piece of paleo-futuristic art from 1975. Click on the images to make them larger or visit his site to see all of his space paintings.

The Simpsons go to EPCOT

Fans of Disney's Epcot, (the theme park formerly known as EPCOT Center), seem to fall into three categories:

1. Angry
2. Bored
3. Nostalgic

There are a number of websites devoted to EPCOT that critique the theme park and Disney management for letting it become the laughstock it now seems to be. (For the Simpsons's take, check out the video at the bottom of the post.) Here is a small sampling of those blogs and sites I have come across which seem to make very relevant points.

EPCOT Central
Waltopia
Re-Imagineering