On the water!

He predicted Amazon! Almost.

The April 27, 1958 edition of the Sunday comic strip Closer Than We Think by Arthur Radebaugh ran in newspapers throughout the U.S. and showed people of the 1950s a glimpse of the robot-driven world to come.

Titled, “Robot Warehouses” the strip features red metal robots whirring about with packages and small trailers. In this world, the robot is man’s helpful friend.

The comic strip explains that, “manpower shortages in the future may require mechanized handling of the necessities of life -- food, clothing, building components and so on. As the population grows, the size of storage facilities will have to keep pace.”

Marketed as a computer/printer combo. But the bad part of it all was that the Adam's power supply generated electromagnetic pulses that could erase its own data tapes. Yeah, that was the Adam experience. So I can see how maybe that would turn off buyers.

Despite causing more data loss than user productivity, it demonstrated Coleco's ambitious leap from toys to technology.

I bet that is a great keyboard though. Nice satisfying solid clicks.

Illustration on the cover of the 1958 book Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin.

I recently read this book. It still holds up!

Giant ants are bad enough, but giant ants with spears?! Oy!

A “seven-league boot” vehicle that could supposedly make each step about six times longer, allowing astronauts or soldiers to move quickly across rough terrain.

Painted by Italian illustrator Walter Molino. Cover of the Italian weekly magazine La Domenica del Corriere, January 2, 1966.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/69011747

In 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense began a concept development for a portable electronic delivery device for technical maintenance information called project PEAM, the Portable Electronic Aid for Maintenance.

Detailed specs and summary report: https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA210348/mode/2up

Detailed specifications were completed in FY 1981/82, and prototype development began with Texas Instruments that same year. Four prototypes were produced and delivered for testing in 1986, and tests were completed in 1987.

The final summary report was produced in 1989 by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, authored by Robert Wisher and J. Peter Kincaid.

A patent application for the PEAM device, titled "Apparatus for delivering procedural type instructions", was submitted by Texas Instruments on December 4, 1985, listing John K. Harkins and Stephen H. Morriss as inventors.

Keyboard looks tricky

Functional and cool looking. And that's what counts! Art by Boris Artzybasheff

Illustration by Milton Luros for Future Science Fiction, March 1953.

Not too far off. We are getting closer to that. Hopefully.

Illustration by Edmund Emshwiller. Artwork for the April 1953 issue of Rocket Stories.

The Ford Gyron debuted at the Detroit Motor Show in 1961 and is among one of many concept cars that Syd mead created.

It had two wheels, so it could be argued that it was more motorcycle than car, but its two passengers would sit side-by-side. When stationary, two legs would extend either side to hold it upright.

When moving, the Gyron used a gyroscope to maintain balance.

Illustration before prototype was made:

That is a Digital Equipment Corporation VT100, introduced in 1978.

It's technically a video terminal, not a complete standalone computer though.

The VT100 connected through a serial cable to a larger computer, often a DEC PDP or VAX system. The larger machine stored files and ran programs, while the VT100 provided the keyboard and screen.

That keyboard looks like my Atari 800XL that I got for Christmas when I was a teen. Best. Christmas. Ever. Now I gotta find vintage Atari stuff to post.

art by the great Shigeru Komatsuzaki

Created during Sid Mead’s early work for the United States Steel Corporation, U.S. Steel Projections Book.

The May/June 1969 issue of Bell Laboratories' Record included a look back at the technology that had been developed by the research lab since 1956 in its quest to make a practical videophone.

One of the biggest challenges was getting a videophone to work within existing infrastructure. The telephone companies had already laid out telephone lines to homes and offices across the U.S.

There was no desire to roll out any new infrastructure, so the goal was to use those existing lines and supply each home and exchange with new hardware for sending and receiving video messages in real time.

An electric car imagined by Arthur Radebaugh in the March 29, 1959 edition of the Sunday comic strip, "Closer Than We Think."

I'm digging this design! We need cars to look like this!

Original illustration:

More propellers is always a good thing!

For the story, The Towers of Titan, by Ben Bova. A team of Earth scientists investigate mysterious ancient machines discovered on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Read it for free at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72339