Those of you who are familiar with my posts know that I love everything from the mid 20th century. A while ago I started a series of science-fiction Americana drawings, like Norman Rockwell but with robots and aliens. I just set up a website for these pictures, The Saturday Evening Weblog. Right now I have 30 or 40 drawings and will be posting one every day until I run out, and after that I will post them as I draw them (usually a few per week). Anyone who likes retro-futurism or science fiction should check it out.
I was flipping through one of my old copies of Popular Science when this ad caught my eye, so I went to Google Books to find a digital version from their Popular Science archive.
(From the October 1967 issue of Popular Science)
I'm sure many of you will agree that this prospect alone would be enough to shell out the equivalent of roughly $5,000 for one of those new-fangled microwave ovens...
Of course, not everyone had bad ideas in those old issues of Popular Science. Many of the ideas for new products were quite brilliant. This series will look at ideas that were ahead of their time. Today's lesson: In Car Tape Deck.
(from the March 1954 issue of Popular Science)
For a little background, the modern tape recorder came about in 1939, but it wasn't refined enough for commercial use until the late 1940s. Reel to reel tape recorders started to become common home recording machines in the mid 1950s and as a professional home audio format in the late 1950s. The first automobile tape player was the Muntz Stereo-Pak of 1962 which evolved in the Lear Jet Stereo 8 (better known as 8 Track) in 1964. Even so, 8 track players didn't become common in cars until the late 1960s, so unfortunately A. P. Sabol had another fifteen years to wait before his request was answered...
One of my college courses this year is called "Posthumanism in Science Fiction" (it actually counts towards the core classes needed to graduate). The instructor, Dan Dinello, used to work with Stephen Colbert back in the 1990s, and recently he decided to show the class one of the short films he made with Colbert, a strange dark comedy called Shock Asylum. Like everything else, it happened to be on YouTube (though this version is shorter than the one I saw), so enjoy:
Category: Motor Vehicles, 1950's, Yesterday's Tomorrows