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retro futurism
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retro futurism
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retro futurism
Meet Your Mate With Operation Match, the First Computer Dating Service (1965)
In 1965, two enterprising students from Harvard, Jack Tarr and Vaughan Morrill, dreamed up the idea of a computerized dating service. Aided by David Crump and Douglas Ginsburg (in 1987 he withdrew his name from nomination to the Supreme Court after admitting to—gasp!—smoking pot in college), they put their idea in motion and created "Operation Match." Clients paid $3.00 and filled out a 110-item questionnaire that, in addition to the usual statistics of age, height, weight, sex, included questions like the following . . . More »
retro futurism
The "World's First Television Lounge," 1949
In 1949, ordinary Americans were buying televisions to an extent that some bar owners worried that the sets installed in their establishments would no longer draw the crowds they once did. That's why the savvy owner of New York's Hotel Beverly opened a special lounge featuring a "'life-size' television receiver" that projected the image on a four- by six-foot screen. Click through for more info about what Liquor Store and Dispenser (does it make you as happy as it does me to know that there once was a magazine with that name?) called the "world's first television cocktail lounge." More »
retro futurism
Computers Will Put Us All Out of Work! 1957
Whether automation helps or hurts workers is on an ongoing question. Here, at the beginning of the information age, a blinking, whirring, wall-sized EMERAC computer (a play on the real-life ENIAC) puts a group of reference librarians to shame in a scene from Desk Set (1957). Yep, there are pink slips in those pay envelopes. Of course, "Emmy" herself was replaced by a newer, smaller, faster model long ago.
retro futurism
Not Quite a Jetpack, But the Rotorcycle Is Still Pretty Cool (1960)
The one-person helicopter doesn't have quite the cachet of the jetpack, but it has its own futuristic appeal. There's its appearance in the dystopian future of Road Warrior, of course. And more than one mid-20th-century imagining of the future included personal helicopters or gyrocopters as part of the skyscape. Apparently, the military was thinking along the same lines: here, from 1960, is the U.S. Navy's Gyrodyne YRON-1 Rotorcycle. More »
retro futurism
Moon Party with Major Matt Mason and Buddies, 1968
Cool outer space toys, rhyming copy ("He lives on the moon, we'll all be there soon ..."), and a slightly homoerotic subtext (that Sgt. Storm in his red uniform is a charmer, I tell you)—they're all part of this 1968 commercial for the Major Matt Mason product line. Major Matt's got his jet pack ... um, wish I had a rhyming dictionary.
retro futurism
In the 1970s, You May Wear Your Phone - Thanks to Radiation! (1960)
All those vintage "How We'll Live In The Future" articles rarely mentioned anything that could be construed as a cell phone. Microwave ovens, yes; online shopping, yes—but not the now ubiquitous cell phone. This 1960 ad for Radiation, Incorporated (yes, they've changed their name since then) is an exception—and it touches on GPS technology, too. Click through for a closer look at "The New Age of Communication." More »
retro futurism
Training for the Automated Office of Tomorrow--Today! 1984
Learn how in a mere 24 weeks you can become a word-processing secretary using all the latest computer technology in this 1984 ad for MBTI (Manpower Business Training Institute) featuring Voice of the Milwaukee Bucks, Eddie Doucette. I left Milwaukee a year later—and with no training at all was soon using a computer with a black screen and screaming neon green type just like these. Also note that, despite the fact that MBTI is selling its up-to-the-minute technology training, the woman to the left of spokesman Doucette is using an electric typewriter.
retro futurism
The Cartoon that Introduced Sputnik to America, 1957
I love the industrial animation used in this newsreel introducing Americans to Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviets on October 4, 1957. Despite fears of red space supremacy, Americans immediately started eating sputnikburgers and talking about pupniks (Sputnik II carried a dog into space), whatniks, beatniks, and spoofniks ... but I digress.
retro futurism
A Czech Vision of the 21st Century, from 1957
The kitchen of the year 2000 is the subject of this crazy little film from 1957, produced in connection with the "Paris Exhibition of the Future." Shopping channels and microwave ovens make an appearance, as do pop-up cutlery and dish racks, a glass refrigerator, and an automatic recipe station that runs on IBM cards, all narrated in Czech with fabulously fractured English subtitles.
retro futurism
Zap Yourself Healthy With The Electric Corset, 1883
Ladies! Are you suffering from Nervous Debility, Spinal Complaints, Rheumatism, Paralysis, Numbness, Dyspepsia, Liver and Kidney Troubles, Impaired Circulation, or Constipation? Perhaps you are troubled by those annoying Diseases Peculiar To Women (and I think you know what I mean). Then Dr. Scott's Electric Corset is for you! Get a closer look and find out more after the jump. More »
retro futurism
The Most Exciting, Baffling, Thrilling, and Mysterious Tie-In Product Ever! (1954)
The Mono-view Outer Space Helmet (yours for 25 cents and a box top) was just one of a panoply of mail-order goodies the Space Patrol TV show shamelessly hawked to the kiddies during its run from 1950-1955. Remember, Commander Corry wants you to have it! Unless you're a girl, of course: the ad makes it clear the Mono-view Outer Space Helmet was for boys only.
retro futurism
How to Dial a Phone, circa 1930s
For all you whippersnappers out there who never had the experience, here's a primer on how to use a rotary dial telephone. Produced by Big Brother ... I mean, the telephone company ... in the 1930s, the film explained the dial tone and busy signal to consumers used to having the operator connect their calls. Fun fact: AT&T installed the first "automatic phones" in 1915 in Norfolk, Virginia, and removed the last manual phones from the system in 1978.
retro futurism
Another Typewriter That Types When It Is Spoken To, 1961
Here's Dr. Harry F. Olson, director of the Acoustical and Electromagnetical Laboratory of RCA, with his newly patented phonetic typewriter. Looking very similar to the Machine That Types What Is Spoken To It of 1913, Olson's typewriter took dictation through a microphone and turned it into type via what the New York Times called a "speech-analysis mechanism." Click through for a closer look at this grandparent of voice-recognition technology. More »
retro futurism
At my first office job in the mid-80s, we backed up the computer every night on reels of magnetic tape. Here, in a scene from a slide show of 1980s IBM mainframe computer ops (all set to a snappy Sousa-esque march), tape librarians and console operators show how they did it at a large data center - which makes the amount of complaining we did about having to do two measly cartridges pale in comparison.
Gigantic Computers, Huge Reels of Tape - Remember the 80s?
At my first office job in the mid-80s, we backed up the computer every night on reels of magnetic tape. Here, in a scene from a slide show of 1980s IBM mainframe computer ops (all set to a snappy Sousa-esque march), tape librarians and console operators show how they did it at a large data center - which makes the amount of complaining we did about having to do two measly cartridges pale in comparison.
retro futurism
A Trio of Futuristic Guitars from 1958
If you're a music fan—or a fan of Guitar Hero—chances are good you're familiar with the iconic look of Gibson's Flying V guitar. What you might not know, however, is that the Flying V is only one of a trio of futuristic guitars designed in the late 1950s by Gibson president Ted McCarty. Click through for the story of the Flying V, the Explorer, and the Moderne, plus a peek at their patent drawings. More »
retro futurism
Pull the Plazer's Instant Destruct Trigger and See Your Target Destroyed!
Direct to you from the pages of the 1966 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog comes the Plazer, the bleeping, blipping transistorized ray gun of the future. Even though the Plazer's "ray beams" were contained "safely inside the gun," it's doubtful you'd see the words "'Hit' a plane" advertising anything today. Click through for all the Plazer's specs. P.S. $8.88 in 1966 is equivalent to roughly $57.00 today. More »
retro futurism
