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.
They weren't too far out: the Breitling Emergency chronographs have some of the features of this concept - but not the phone functions!
ReplyDeletehttp://breitling.com/en/models/professional/emergency/
I recommend 'The Shape Of Further Things' by Brian Aldiss, in which he posits something very similar to the Risto, although ten years earlier.
ReplyDeleteI blog more about it here:
http://rossignol.cream.org/?p=406
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".)
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ReplyDeleteThere actually was a late sixties/early seventies transistor radio watch called the 'Wristo'.
ReplyDeleteSee it here;
Link
It was enormous due to the double AA battery required.