I Heart Chaos

Promo film for GM’s Futurama ride at the 1964 World’s Fair

General Motors promotional film follows a young boy as he rides the Futurama 2 ride at the 1964- 65 New York World’s Fair.

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Mars is populated by a single giant thinking vegetable

The Giant All-Seeing Eyeball was hoisted high in the Tribune, given supposed life by the very highly capable astronomer W.W. Campbell (1862-1930, with his biography here at the National Academy of Science), who is quoted by the paper as being the source of this preposterous theory. Campbell was not pleased by this—not at all. And I can well imagine why.

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In 1967, Walter Cronkite shows the home office of the 21st century

It’s a decent setup, but it would be impossible to predict in the 1960s that everyone would have all of that in a device in their pocket, and they’ll use it to look at videos of cats falling off furniture.

posted 07 February, 2013
by cranberryzero
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In 1962, this is what some thought space-age hairdos of the future would look like

Atomic shampoo and space hair OF THE FUTURE

posted 02 September, 2012
by cranberryzero
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Vision of the future from Japan 1969

This is 1969’s view of 1989! It’s from Shonen Sunday Magazine, a weekly comic compilation. Beautiful, groovy art. Hey, at least they got the “Roomba” right (even if they were off by a few decades!)

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In 1901, you could have paid 50 cents to ride an airship to the Moon

The late 1800s and early 1900s, fueled by early sci-fi by the likes of Jules Verne, was abound with dreams of being able to take a quaint weekend trip to the Moon or through the solar system as easily as one could sail across the Atlantic. And in 1901, an amusement park ride designer concocted an elaborate ship that would take passengers on a virtual journey from the Earth to the Moon and back.

AT&T future-predicting video of the day: “Seeing the Digital Future” (1961)

In 1961, the digital future sure looked like “A man talking to another man. Man to man. Man to Machine. Machine to machine.” Devices such as the Call Director, “fingertip access to information, ideas and decisions” were considered very advanced pieces of communication hardware. Today, we’d scoff at such a fancy “hold button” taking up so much desk space.

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What an iPad would have looked like in the 1930s

Even though tablets are the hot new 21st century thing, in the 1930s, some people were trying to envision what a “portable”, mechanical and electronic reading machine might look like. It’s not exactly something that would fit in your pocket, and it’s not exactly a step up from a newspaper.