The Internet Was Almost Called the Catenet

The Internet Was Almost Called the Catenet

In its early days, radio technology was often called wireless telephone. The Xbox was almost called the MEGA. But did you know that the internet nearly wound up with a different name too? Indeed, the internet was almost called the catenet.

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Synthetic Hamburgers Are the Future–And Have Been for Decades

Synthetic Hamburgers Are the Future--And Have Been for Decades

"Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." – Winston Churchill, 1932

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This Week in Time Capsules: Royal Baby Edition

This Week in Time Capsules: Royal Baby Edition

This week we have a time capsule of floppy disks that will be hard to read, a church that thinks microfilm is the best way to future-proof your capsule, and we finally get that royal baby time capsule I was wondering about last week. IT’S A BOY(sterous waste of media coverage)!

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The 1940s Kitchen of Tomorrow Was Difficult to Parody

The 1940s Kitchen of Tomorrow Was Difficult to Parody

Pre-dehydrated food processor? Non-functional sinks installed purely for style? A streamlined… baby? When it comes to midcentury visions of tomorrow, sometimes it’s hard to tell the spoofs from the earnest predictions. But what’s even more interesting is why the parodies popped up in the first place.

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What Queen Elizabeth II’s Speech Would Have Been If WWIII Had Happened

What Queen Elizabeth II's Speech Would Have Been If WWIII Had Happened

The early 1980s was a time of serious dread for many people worried that the U.S. and the Soviet Union might start World War III. And it’s easy to understand why. One wrong move by either nuke-equipped country, and it was the end of civilization as we knew it. In fact, that’s nearly what happened on September 26, 1983 when a Soviet early warning system falsely detected U.S. missiles headed for Russia. Had Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov not been skeptical, there’s little doubt we’d have seen World War III. And a newly released speech written for the Queen of England gives a peek at what that alternate history may have looked like.

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The 100-Year-Old Charlie Chaplin Mashups That Are Lost Forever

The 100-Year-Old Charlie Chaplin Mashups That Are Lost Forever

Mashups, intellectual property laws, bootlegs, copyright. While those are all valid concerns today, they’re hardly anything new. Just ask Charlie Chaplin.

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From Shock Chairs to Smell-O-Vision: The Movie Gimmicks of Yesteryear

From Shock Chairs to Smell-O-Vision: The Movie Gimmicks of Yesteryear

Have you ever been to a movie so shocking that the theater management offered you a life insurance policy just in case you died of fright? Filmmaker William Castle devised a scheme that did just that for the release of his 1958 suspense/horror film Macabre. Thankfully, they never had to pay out.

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Why There’s No 1960s Jetsons Art in Tomorrow’s Big Animation Auction

Why There's No 1960s Jetsons Art in Tomorrow's Big Animation Auction

On Wednesday there’s an enormous animation art auction in L.A. that includes some gorgeous pop culture history. It will include original animation cels from Fleischer Studios, concept art from Disney legend Mary Blair, and an original production drawing from Winsor McCay’s classic 1914 film Gertie the Dinosaur. There’s even some 1970s and 1980s Jetsons art that should pique the interest of any retrofuture fan. But there’s one thing noticeably absent among the Jetsons pieces: any production cels from the 1962-63 iteration of the show—which was its first and only season until the 1985 reboot. But how can that be?

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The Internet’s Save-the-Date: A Tiny Item in a UCLA Student Newspaper

The Internet's Save-the-Date: A Tiny Item in a UCLA Student Newspaper

There are surprisingly few documents from 1969 that mark the birth of the internet. We have some notes scribbled on a pad of paper, and a few newspaper articles after the fact. But there weren’t any reporters parked outside of 3420 Boelter Hall at UCLA on October 29, 1969 to witness that historic moment when the ARPANET gasped its first breaths. In fact, it wasn’t even above-the-fold news.

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Air Travel Today is a Damn Bargain

Air Travel Today is a Damn Bargain

It might not feel like it, but air travel’s a steal compared to what it was a half century ago. Since the American airline industry was deregulated in 1978, ticket prices have fallen by about 40%. Of course, air travel isn’t quite as luxurious as some postwar dreamers imagined, but you can’t beat that price. So just how much more did it cost to fly in the 1950s? Quite a bit, once you adjust for inflation.

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