Friday, March 2, 2007

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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They weren't too far out: the Breitling Emergency chronographs have some of the features of this concept - but not the phone functions!
http://breitling.com/en/models/professional/emergency/

Anonymous said...

I recommend 'The Shape Of Further Things' by Brian Aldiss, in which he posits something very similar to the Risto, although ten years earlier.

I blog more about it here:

http://rossignol.cream.org/?p=406

Paul M. Cray said...

I remember that page well. I vaguely think that it was Arthur C. Clarke who came up with wristo idea. Can anyone with a beter memory for/knowledge of his 1960s essays confirm this? (It might have been in "Voices from the Sky".)

watchismo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
watchismo said...

There actually was a late sixties/early seventies transistor radio watch called the 'Wristo'.

See it here;

Link

It was enormous due to the double AA battery required.