In the U.S., the Constellation sold for $97.50 when it was introduced in 1955—and you can still get one today.

Huge, rocket airliners that can take off and land vertically soar through the skies. Individuals take to the air in scooters. Big jet helicopters serve as aerial busses and trucks. A few gyrocopters—silent as a breeze—float overhead.

General Motors expanded the electronic highway theme, imagining cars (perhaps even the Firebird III pictured above) that were "steered, accelerated, braked or stopped without any assistance from their drivers." (Amend this to "from their drivers' brains," and I think we would all agree this is happening now.) Instead "various current-carrying wires [were] buried in the pavement. Pickup coils . . . mounted on the cars" flashed signals to "electrohydraulic servos" which did all the work. "Meanwhile, the driver can safely take a snooze if he likes."

Plastic-walled houses got their electricity from a "petroleum-powered fuel cell . . . the size of a standard office desk," at least according to Standard Oil. Another view was presented "in the Fair's theme diorama, 'The World of Tomorrow.'"

Here are houses put together with chemical fasteners in place of nails, built of color-impregnated materials that never need painting, and kept clean by high-frequency sound. The homes have solar ovens for use on clear days, microwave ovens for stormy days. Each chair or sofa can be heated or cooled individually to suit the sitter. Heating devices are woven into the rugs and installed in the walls.

Where the futurists of 1962 really shone, however, was in the field of communications. AT&T predicted fiber optics ("enormous conversational traffic will ride on beams of light"), cordless phones, videophones, teleconferencing, and the internet ("Between offices hundreds of miles apart, machine will 'talk' to machine, as computers automatically feed data to one another.") RCA claimed that all televisions would be color, ranging in size from that of a book, to "a very large set, only five inches thick" (huge compared to today's flat-panels, of course, but slender for the day). "One such console will offer a choice of live or preselected taped TV shows, plus stereophonic radio and tape recorder"—a primitive home entertainment center.

Even the American Library Association got in on the act, predicting computers that "at the twist of a dial" would "spew out complete lists of reference books on any subject. And if you want to take a look at a rare picture or manuscript in some distant library, you can do so by closed-circuit TV." Photo: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Not until the trained engineer attacks the problem of housekeeping will these feminine ravings against servants and housekeeping difficulties be stilled . . . The kitchen engineer's first task will be the simplification of cooking . . . If letters are conveyed almost to your very door by the pneumatic tube, why should not the same means supply you with breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Imagine a kitchen of unprecedented immensity, a building comparable with a modern hotel in size, a place where an army of cooks is busily engaged in roasting meats, in preparing vegetables, in concocting entrancing sauces, in mixing salads, in stirring dreamy desserts. Imagine pneumatic tubes leading from the delivery floor of that mighty building to thousands of homes and apartments. Seven o'clock comes. Carriers three feet long, divided into compartments for soup, meat, sauces, vegetables and clean dishes, are slipped into the throats of myriad tubes. The covers are thrown down and with a swish the carriers are blown by compressed air to their destination. A few minutes later they are discharged into the kitchens of as many dwellings. The single maid of the household serves the dinner thus pneumatically received.

"Does this imply that the city will cook for the people?" he continued, "That is exactly what will happen. What is more, soup cooks, steak broilers, and coffee specialists will be elected very much as Aldermen will be elected"—political gridlock thus ensuring the starvation deaths of city dwellers everywhere, a cynical 21st-century type might add.

Kaempffert's letter to the editor was his second attempt at getting this plan off the ground; you can read his earlier article here.

Library of Congress image no. LC-USW3- 032351-E [P&P]

• Housing is cheap! "With all its furnishings, Joe Dobson paid only $5000 for it." But it's not built to last more than 25 years. "Nobody in 2000 sees any sense in building a house that will last a century."
  
• Chemicals are good! "Everything about the Dobson house is synthetic in the best chemical sense of the world. When Joe Dobson awakens in the morning he uses a depilatory. No soap or safety razor for him."
  
• No more cooking! "A few die-hards still broil a chicken or roast a leg of lamb, but the experts have developed ways of deep-freezing partially baked cuts of meat. Even soup and milk are delivered in the form of frozen bricks." Jane uses the "the electronic industrial stove which came out of World War II" to heat things up.
  
• For dessert, there's used napkins and dirty underwear! Statisticians predicted that population increase would lead to starvation, so "sawdust and wood pulp were converted into sugary foods. Discarded paper table 'linen' and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy."
  
• One word: plastics! "There are no dish-washing machines ... because dishes are thrown away after they have been used once, or rather put into a sink where they are dissolved by superheated water." Housework was a snap once Jane Dobson was done melting the dishes, since all she had to do was turn "the hose on everything. Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors—all are made of synthetic fiber or waterproof plastic." A "blast of hot air dries everything."