Six months prior to its introduction to the press in 1967, Ford president Arjay Miller said that electric cars like the Comuta “could be available in five to 10 years.” According to the New York Times in 1967,

The major advantage of any proposed electric car is that it gives off no smog-producing fumes. But Detroit automakers claim improvements in their standard engines will eliminate the fume problem over the next few years.

Got right on that problem, they did. The Times also noted that another “possibility being considered by Ford is a car that carries an ordinary motor for highway driving and electric motor for city movement”—which of course only took another 37 years for Ford to produce.

Westin's predictions:

• Typical citizen Roger M. Smith commutes to work on a turnpike. When he reaches the tollgate, “his license plate is automatically scanned by a television camera and his number is sent instantaneously to an on-line computer containing lists of wanted persons, stolen cars, and traffic-ticket violators.” If the scan registers a hit, “police stationed 100 yards along the turnpike will have the signal before Smith’s car reaches that position.”
• Meanwhile, back at the tollgate, Roger “places his right thumb in front of a scanning camera. At the same time, he recites into the unit’s microphone” his name and national I.D. number, “the initial performance of a ritual that will be repeated” throughout the day.
• That’s because voiceprint, thumbprint, and I.D. number will be used in lieu of cash. “Money has been eliminated except for pocket-change transactions.”
• One “byproduct of the cashless society is that every significant movement and transaction of Roger Smith’s life has produced a permanent record in the computer memory system. As he spends, uses and travels, he leaves an intransmutable and centralized documentary trail behind him.”
• In 1975, for every person in the U.S., there are “four master files”: educational records, employment history, financial history, and the all-important “national citizenship file. . . . a unified Federal-state-local dossier that contains all of Roger’s life history that is ‘of relevance’ to Government. In 1975, that is quite a broad category.”
• Westin went on to describe how new “laser memory system” technology meant that “a single 4800-foot reel of one-inch tape could contain about 20 double-spaced typed pages of data on every person in the United States—man, woman and child.”

• The Groceries Come to You! A trip to the store will be aided by “memory belts” that could “learn” and “remember” coded information. This “could mean that you would step up to a switchboard, push the proper buttons—and the items you select would come to you on a conveyor belt.”
• Glass Houses! “House-making machines” might “drive up to your lot and wind endless fine threads of glass to make a cone- or mushroom-shaped house. It’s possible that your may one day look back to your ‘square’ teen years, when you lived in a cube instead of a curved house.”
• Inflatable Sofas! “Easy-go furnishings, things that can be transferred with little effort, will be necessities for your mobile family. You might own an inflatable sofa that can be folded up inside a small cabinet, tables that can be collapsed, expanded, raised, or lowered, . . . storage pieces that become suitcases.”
• Big Brother Watches Little Brother! “In the future portable TV cameras will establish complete communication throughout the house. . . . Metal reception tags will be sewn inside a child’s clothing and a family radarscope will ‘beep’ his presence within a ten-block area.”

And my favorite innovation:

• “Picture yourself making draperies from a can of ‘fiber spray’!” Because who cares about a jetpack when curtains come in a can?

Inside the rocket, living quarters are situated in the rim of a pressurized wheel-like cabin which revolves to provide artificial gravity. Radio and radar antennae revolve with it. Tubular hydroponic “gardens” on either side of the rim grow algae to produce oxygen and high protein food.

If that wasn’t enough, the Atomic Pulse Rocket “could transport payload to the Moon at $6.74 per pound, less than one quarter the prevailing air freight charges over equivalent distance.” Or so said this ad for American Bosch Arma Corporation—the folks who brought you the “inertial guidance system for the ATLAS ICBM” missile.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Radebaugh’s detailed visions of the future appeared in ads for businesses as diverse as Coke, United Airlines, and National Motor Bearing. His syndicated cartoon column, “Closer Than We Think” ran from 1958 to 1962. Be sure to check out The Palace of Culture’s awesome online exhibit “Radebaugh: The Future We Were Promised” for more about this retro-futurist visionary.

The Great Romance volume two was found in the Hocken Library in Dunedin, New Zealand. The story follows John Hope, who falls asleep after using a mysterious elixir and wakes up in a utopian future. In this future, humans are all very civil to one another, as required by law. They also have great aspirations for space travel and take Hope to Venus and other planets.

Publishers Weekly went as far as to claim that, "This may have been the first time that anyone described space suits, airlocks or the difficulties of landing on an asteroid or entering a planetary atmosphere." The author is unknown and printed as "The Inhabitant," which only furthers my suspicions that this in fact is fanfic written by an alien visitor.

[NZ Herald]

Fuller originally envisioned a vehicle that was “part aircraft, part automobile, with wings that unfolded,” a top speed of 120 mph, and a positively thrifty fuel consumption of 30 miles per gallon. The first Dymaxion car debuted in July 1933, minus the wings or an unfolding tail fin, but with “an awkward periscope” in place of a rearview mirror. Only three were ever made. To cement Dymaxion’s futurist status, “H.G. Wells was photographed in front of the car for the cover of Saturday Review. He talked about using it in the film version of his novel The Shape of Things to Come. (The film appeared in 1936, but without the Dymaxion.)” [New York Times]

Here's the exciting conclusion:

The city contained:

Lofty office buildings 250 stories high, canals carried overhead on suspension cables, airplanes that land on a few square feet of flat space on the side of tall structures, streets with nine lanes and nine levels of traffic . . . Although the model city is futuristic, its construction violates no engineering practices. It is really engineering skill carried a bit farther than today.

New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced ... well, you get the idea. Scientists revive a man struck by lightning in 1930; he is rechristened "Single O". He is befriended by J-21, who can't marry the girl of his dreams because he isn't "distinguished" enough — until he is chosen for a 4-month expedition to Mars by a renegade scientist. The Mars J-21, his friend, and stowaway Single O visit is full of scantily clad women doing Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers and worshiping a fat middle-aged man. (Jon Reeves, IMDB)

[Modern Mechanix]

PILOTED SATELLITE will mark man's first venture into outer space . . . It will come only after long experience with unmanned satellites. Best-informed opinion places the date with the decade 1970 to 1980. Later, manned satellites may be used as "space platforms." Moon rockets could be assembled and launched from such space laboratories. A TRIP AROUND THE MOON in a rocket ship launched either from a space platform or from the earth's surface (depending on technological developments) will be the next step. . . Experts believe that will come in the decade 1980-1990. A LANDING ON THE MOON . . . man's goal for as long as he has had the imagination to think about it, will be made in the last decade of this century. Travel to all these planets will come, but probably not within the lifetime of anyone now alive.