Of all the buzzwords of the retrofuture, nothing tickled the imagination of midcentury Americans quite like "automatic." Sure, the word pops up here and there in 1930s advertisements for things like the house of the future. And the word was incredibly popular during the rise of the push button at the turn of the 20th century. But it wasn’t until after World War II that the word really kicked into hyperdrive. Cooking was going to be automatic
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Mental Floss recently wrote a short post about a cool British Pathe video showing off what fashion designers of the year 1939 imagined we’d be wearing in the year 2000. And though the film largely focuses on designs for women, it didn’t leave out the men!
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Today in our time capsule news round-up we have a mystery time capsule from 1927, some ideas for building your own back-to-school capsule, and former classmates in Connecticut who went looking for a time capsule but wound up finding each other. They didn’t find the capsule though. It’s nice they found each other, but I was really hoping they’d find the capsule. They didn’t though. No capsule. Just each other.
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In an effort to stick out from the crowd, advertisers often come up with clever ways to reach consumers outside the traditional world of media. These efforts come in many names and varieties: experiential, guerrilla, wild postings, the list is seemingly endless. But despite how clever many of these marketing tactics may seem, there’s almost always someone who did it first. And then there are those that someone tried a century ago that were never heard of again.
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The Sunday comic strip "Closer Than We Think" was launched in 1958 at the dawn of the Space Race. But the strip’s mission wasn’t just to show Americans what would soon be happening on the moon and beyond. No, the space age would touch every part of American life — from the fuel that would power your driverless car to the dictating machine that would be built into your futuristic office desk
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It’s a perennial question that gets people on both sides of the debate pretty riled up — should everyone go to college? With the cost of higher education continuing to climb since the postwar era — a time when many people were able to pay for college with part-time jobs and generous government assistance like the G.I. Bill — is getting a university education even worth it these days? In 1987 an educator by the name of Herbert London argued that for most people it wasn’t. But London explained that there were also many factors other than price that would lead to nothing less than the inevitable extinction of the university system. One of the most important, London argues, was the public’s disillusionment with liberal politics on campus.
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Today if your car breaks down or you’re in an accident, help is little more than a phone call away. It’s something that many drivers of the 21st century take for granted, what with our Space Age smartphone technology. This automotive safety net, of course, wasn’t available in the 1930s. But one visionary who was known for thinking decades ahead wanted to change all that with a revolutionary idea: the carphone.
In the 1930s, radios were increasingly popular in American cars. So much so that cities and states throughout the U.S. started banning radios because they feared that they were too distracting for motorists. But in 1935 magazine publisher (and sci-fi legend) Hugo Gernsback imagined that these boxes of distraction could be turned into live-saving radiophones—the two-way car radio of the future.
Writing in the June 1935 issue of Radio-Craft magazine, Gernsback painted a picture for readers, explaining that too often people of the 1930s were getting in near-fatal accidents and had no way of signaling for help.
Picture a scene which can be reconstructed from any Monday morning’s newspaper—indeed, almost any newspaper of any day throughout the length and breadth of this country. The driver on the highway, due to carelessness, or due to intoxication, or because he fell asleep while driving, runs into a telephone or telegraph pole, partially demolishing his car. Let us assume in this instance that he has not been killed outright, because not all accidents are fatal. One of the passengers, however has been seriously injured. The accident is on a little frequented road. It will take time to summon help, granting that there are passing automobilists who may have witnessed the accident. If it happens in the daytime, passing cars may be relied upon, of course, to tell about the accident at the next town. However, if the accident happens at night and the car ran off the road where it is not visible, the injured party or parties may lie for hours before they are discovered—and in the meanwhile death may occur!
Gernsback’s solution? Turn all of those radios that were becoming so popular into transceivers—radios that can both receive and send messages.
Curiously, Gernsback thought that the radio set should be positioned underneath the driver’s seat to ensure that it was protected from damage in the event of a crash. Makes you wonder how many more accidents this would’ve caused if the driver tried to change the radio station from such an awkward position.
Suppose, now, that we have the car radio set (a transceiver, or convertible type of set capable of operation as either a transmitter or a receiver, at will) available in working order, (the radio set of the future will not be in the front of the car but will probably be under the seats in the rear compartment so it will stay in operation, unless the entire car is smashed to pieces). Even if the driver or the other passengers of the car are injured to some extent, they still may have the strength to flip a switch and talk into a microphone placed conveniently in some compartment in the front or rear of the car. An SOS is sounded, the car giving directions where the wreck occurred, and in very little time help will arrive at the spot. In addition to occasionally saving lives, it will often save untold suffering, because ambulances may thus be summoned quickly, and in the case of a minor accident, a towing car can reach the wreck with the least possible delay.
But it wouldn’t be so easy at first. Gernsback recognized that the FCC would have to step in and allocate radio spectrum for his transceivers if they were going to be used by the broader public.
In the first place, a special wave- length for automobiles must be set aside by the Federal Communications Commission. This must be a frequency below 6 meters; preferably, such a frequency where the effects of the broadcast transmission are ineffective beyond the horizon, or, let us say, within a radius of 20 miles or less. The reason for this is obvious. If you choose a higher wavelength, then the SOS will go out indiscriminately over a very large area and the result would be that too many wrecking cars or ambulances might be summoned. By choosing the correct frequency, however, only a few miles will be effected. The power of the "transceiver" should be such that it need not reach more than about 10 miles. This should be sufficient for all ordinary purposes. (The transmitter must be crystal-controlled so that communication is only possible in this particular channel.)
Gernsback believed that it was simply a matter of creating a dedicated frequency for emergencies that all service and gas stations could keep tabs on. Should they get a call, a tow truck or ambulance could be dispatched immediately.
Every service station in the country would then have in continuous operation a special short-wave receiver tuned only to this frequency. Any incoming call could, therefore, be heard and the attendant would immediately know where the accident occurred. (If he believes that another service station is nearer he will not go for help, unless the call is repeated within ten or fifteen minutes.)
Gernsback finished his argument for two-way car radios as a standard feature in the cars of tomorrow by pointing out that the idea, while futuristic, was entirely practical. They could be installed the very next day in every car in the country. And he was right! Police departments around the country implemented car radios for dispatch not long after.
But simply having the technology available often isn’t enough. Certain political, financial, and social hurdles need to be addressed before anything revolutionary can be adopted by the broader public. It doesn’t matter how great your tech is if the FCC doesn’t grant the spectrum, or if the gas station owners don’t equip themselves with transceivers, or if people find installing your fancy new carphone too expensive.
Whether it’s carphones or Hyperloops
Images: scanned from the June 1935 issue of Radio-Craft magazine
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Not to go all Garfield on you, but the only thing worse than morning is a Monday morning. You wake up and for three blissful seconds you’re not sure what’s in store. The world is your oyster. For one fantastic, fleeting moment you think that maybe you’ll take a walk in the park or go see one of those new motion picture films playing at the showhouse. And then it hits you. It’s Monday. And there are responsibilities to attend to. I’s need to be dotted, T’s need to be crossed, and pixels need to be pushed.
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This week’s round-up of the hottest in time capsule news includes discreetly hidden invitations for any real-life time travelers, memories from the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, and a slice of cake found in a time capsule from 1948.
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