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Tech NewsThe “electronic teacher console,” dreamt up by legendary design firm Sundberg-Ferar for the American Seating Company in 1967. The desk drew inspiration from other futuristic school desks of the 1950s and 60s. It’s unclear if a version of this desk was ever produced and sold to consumers. [Google Patents]
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Tech News
Men such as IBM Economist Joseph Froomkin feel that automation will eventually bring about a 20-hour work week, perhaps within a century, thus creating a mass leisure class. Some of the more radical prophets foresee the time when as little as 2% of the work force will be employed, warn that the whole concept of … Continued
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Tech News
This Week in Time Capsules: Launching a Sports Drink To The Moon
This week in our time capsule news round-up we have a mystery capsule in Michigan that will finally get a public unveiling, some confused time capsule hunters in Australia who really have their work cut out for them, and a Pittsburgh company that wants to put a time capsule on the moon—complete with a Japanese … Continued
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Tech News
Atomic Bomb Testing Dummy (1953)
March 1953: A dummy sitting behind a protective shield in a Nevada basement used for atomic bomb testing. The mannequins used for these kinds of tests were often purchased from downtown Las Vegas department stores like J.C. Penney’s. [National Geographic’s Tumblr “Found”]
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Tech News
10 More Viral Photos That Are Actually Total Fakes
The internet can be a tough place to distinguish fact from fiction. Who has time to fact-check all those beautiful, weird, and sometimes horrifying pictures? Well, we do. Today we have ten more images you may have seen tossed around on social media recently. And all of them are lying to you. 1) Is this … Continued
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Tech NewsA Family of Singing Time-Travelers Drive the Highways of Tomorrow
Tired of sitting in traffic? Just take the completely automated, high-speed safety lane! At least that’s what the singing, time-traveling family of the 1950s did in this amazing film from General Motors. In 1956, over 2.2 million Americans visited the General Motor’s Motorama exhibit. It traveled from city to city showing off the latest and … Continued
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Tech News
This Woman Secretly Dubbed American Movies During the Cold War
In the 1980s Irina Margareta Nistor worked as a translator of TV programs in Romania under the Communist regime. But in her spare time she secretly dubbed over 3,000 banned movie titles, all VHS tapes smuggled in from the West. These tapes quickly spread throughout Romania. Nobody knew Nistor’s name. But everybody knew her voice. … Continued
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Tech News
Generation Like: The Kids Sell Out (But Don’t Know What That Means)
The most shocking part of “Generation Like,” PBS’s new Frontline documentary about youth media culture, occurs when a bunch of teenagers confess they don’t know what the term “sell-out” means. This term, so vital to the identities of at least three generations that had come before them, didn’t register as something negative. In fact, it … Continued
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Tech News
Was This The First Robot Ever Arrested?
On August 18, 1982 the Beverly Hills Police Department took a rather unusual perp into custody: a robot called DC-2. The crime? Illegally distributing business cards and generally causing a commotion on North Beverly Drive. It was probably the first time a robot had ever been arrested. When BHPD approached DC-2, the person operating it … Continued
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Tech News
All Work and No Play Makes Self-Driving Cars a Dull Ploy
Back in the 1950s and 60s, self-driving cars represented the fantastic life of luxury that was supposed to be just around the corner. But here in the 21st century we can’t even pretend that our driverless cars of the future will be filled with board games and light reading. No, our self-driving car of tomorrow … Continued
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Tech News
Fallout shelter originally installed in 1955 for a family of three in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The shelter cost $1,800 (over $15,000 adjusted for inflation) and contained four drop-down beds, a chemical toilet, and an air exchange device that was operated by hand-crank. The entire thing was brought to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. during the … Continued
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Tech News
This Week in Time Capsules: Disappointed Students Boo Boring Capsule
Time capsuling is hard. Everybody wants to find that ancient capsule with the dozens of gold bricks or the mummy or whatever. But more often than not, they’re quite boring. Your average 20th century capsule generally has just a handful of old pennies and an American flag. But we keep searching. Because sometimes, we find … Continued
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Tech News
7 NSA Patents: Cyber Manholes, Super-Shredders and More
The National Security Agency has access to the world’s most incredibly sophisticated spy technology. But did you know that the NSA sometimes patents its own creations? The NSA has been granted patents for everything from advanced paper shredders to specific methods of location tracking on the internet. There’s even a super-secure manhole designed to protect … Continued
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Tech News
A Century-Old Prosthesis So Advanced Even an Expert Thought It Was Fake
In our quest to rid the world of fun and joy, we’ve done a number of posts fact-checking viral images. Sometimes we’ll come across an image that just doesn’t smell right, and enlist the help of experts to determine its authenticity. And sometimes, even the experts aren’t quite sure. That was the case recently with … Continued
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Tech News
First Video of the Steve Jobs Time Capsule Being Unearthed
This past September one of the most sought after “lost” time capsules of the 20th century was finally found. After years of various people searching for the thing, the so-called Steve Jobs capsule was finally unearthed in Aspen by a team of excavators from the National Geographic Channel show Diggers. And now we have video … Continued
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Tech News
A 1986 World Future Society report predicted a shortfall of 50 million jobs in the U.S. by the year 2010, thanks to increased automation. The report even had a name for the millions of unemployed. They were called MADMUPS: Middle Aged Downwardly Mobile Underemployed Professionals.
By Matt Novak
Matt Novak
Matt Novak is a reporter at Gizmodo covering news and opinion, with a little history thrown in for good measure. Novak started at Gizmodo in 2013 and has been writing about past visions of the future at Paleofuture.com since 2007. Novak is fascinated with the history of technology and got his start writing professionally for Smithsonian magazine. Emails telling him to "stick to tech" can be sent to [email protected].
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