Paleo-Future

Peter Van Wijnaerde recently emailed me and asked for my opinion on various paleo-futuristic topics. He was doing a presentation for the Br...

It is easy to forget (for my generation, anyways) that attempts to make language more efficient did not start with text-messaging. In a piec...

I take a lot of pride in providing material you can't find anywhere else on the internet. But there's an easy way to tell when I...

The August 20, 1967 Progress-Index (Petersburg, VA) ran a piece titled, "Hard Times Facing Joe Fan," about the overcrowding of sp...

It is astonishing how many predictions of the early 20th century assumed animals (that is, all animals) would eventually be extinct simply ...

The August 28, 1949 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) ran this article and cartoon about the "brain wave" music of the future. ...

From the June 15, 2008 New York Times : Buckminster Fuller’s 1933 Dymaxion, a streamlined pod on three wheels, is one of the lovable oddball...

This Alex Tremulis -designed torpedo boat of the future appeared in the January 20, 1943 issue of Yank - The Army Weekly (New York, NY). Hi...

The August 2, 1959 Chicago Tribune ran this Closer Than We Think strip about personal flying platforms of the future. It's in an image...

This clip from the DVD History of Spaceflight outlines Wernher von Braun's vision for the colonization of space. Be sure to check out...

The November 26, 1977 Tucson Citizen (Tucson, AZ) imagined the border and facility surveillance technology of 1990. Special sensors designe...

This (most likely doctored) photo of a picturephone in 1939 or 1940 is featured in the book Exit to Tomorrow: World's Fair Architecture,...

I don't know whether Criswell believed his own predictions or not. I only know that he was wrong. A lot . An excerpt from the January 11...

Leo Rackow's 1948 illustration of a bubble-top car of the future appears above. Its sleek, uber-streamlined design can be found in the b...

The motto of the 1939 New York World's Fair was, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms." And you wonder why 1930'...

In 1962 the French weekly l'Express postulated about a technologically advanced utopia in the year 2000. By the year 2000 all food will...

Jeff over at 2719 Hyperion has some amazing production art from the 1937 Donald Duck short film Modern Inventions , including this sketch o...

This 1934 Buck Rogers rocket ship toy appears in the book Ray Gun by Eugene W. Metcalf and Frank Maresca. The photography is by Charles Bec...

This image of "moon tourists [discovering] the pleasures of this Moon beach," is from the 1988 book The Earth's Moon (Isaac As...

The March 10, 1956 Ames Daily Tribune (Ames, IA) ran this story about a local play called Futurama 2056 . The entire piece appears below. F...

Given the recent American Airlines decision to charge for your first checked bag, it seemed appropriate to look at this Closer Than We Thin...

The March 5, 1980 Daily Press (Escanaba, MI) ran a piece about prophecies of the apocalypse. An excerpt appears below. Billy Graham, since ...

The September 5, 1925 Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) ran an article titled, "Expect Movies to be Produced in Every Home," in...

The January 4, 1959 issue of Parade magazine published a piece by Sid Ross titled, "Will Robots Make People Obsolete?" The piece ...

A few months back we looked at a clip from the February 26, 1967 episode of CBS's 21st Century . The episode includes an interview with...

Resembling a whale out of water, here you see the Dymaxion, a three-wheeled vehicle being manufactured at Bridgeport, Conn., as "the ca...

The February 28, 1957 Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) ran a fantastic piece about the plant and animal life we would likely find on Mars. A map tha...

Hunting and Destroying Microbes The website Television History has five more French prints which imagine the year 2000. The site claims th...