Matchbox-sized meals. The utopian food of the future, as envisioned by British scientists of the 1950s.
"the housewife of the future will never have to worry about dishpan hands if science puts pills and water on the table instead of steak and potatoes."
— Port Angeles Evening News - July 25, 1956
Synthetic food, as tasty and more nourishing than the real thing, yet so compact that a three-course meal goes in a matchbox, has been made in top secrecy by Government scientists....
Matchbox meals can be kept almost indefinitely without deterioration. An example of the matchbox food could be soup, a dish of synthetic stewed steak followed by a sweet in the form of, say, apple puree. There would not be as much as you might be accustomed to see on a well-filled plate, but it would be satisfying to eat, and the flavour would be indistinguishable from the real thing. The soup will probably be in a tablet form. The stewed steak will be a packet of course granules. There will be a teaspoonful or so of white powder which will be the mashed potatoes. Another little packet of powder will contain the apple puree. The only thing to be added to the chemicals will be water.
— Keystone Wire Service, July 17, 1956
Port Angeles Evening News - July 25, 1956
Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 29, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Food, 1950s
We marvel at films like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, or Wallace and Gromit, in which, during a given scene, one or two puppets might be in motion. I can't fathom the amount of work that Joop Geesink went through to create his films.
Suspect Tipsy Driver Took Wrong Short Cut
AUBURN, Ind. (AP)—Carl Wilder, 39, of Pleasant Lake, Ind., was charged with drunken driving Saturday after his truck went through a farmyard, ran over a farmer's automobile and destroyed 100 yards of fence.
Wilder told doubting police: "I always take this short cut."
Police suspected he was thinking about a gravel road a half mile away.
A great moment in the history of science. Arkansas, 1956.
Corsicana Daily Sun - June 8, 1956
'Drunk-O-Meter' Test Is Fizzle: Man Passes Out
HOT SPRINGS, Ark., June 8 — An attempt to test the accuracy of the "Drunk-O-Meter," a device used to measure the degree of intoxication of a person, ended in failure at Hot Springs.
The reason—the man engaged to get drunk for science passed out before he could be measured.
The experiment was conducted by police at the request of the judges' council, an official unit of the Arkansas Bar Association.
The man drank over a 20-hour period. In that time he consumed four half pints of wine, two half pints of whiskey, four half pints of "moonshine" liquor, and a half pint of vodka.
What a fine joke! The gear-driven, proto-cybernetic hell world of 1958 now looks more like a paradise compared with our world of 2015. No digitization. Hardly any cars on the highway. Children interacting unsupervised with a living ice-cream man. A TV set that can be repaired with a home visit, rather than going straight to the landfill. Coffee perked at home instead of provided by Starbucks. Human interaction unmediated by screens....
Very creepy. If you were woken by a stranger telling you to answer the phone, would you do it?
I'm a pretty deep sleeper. It usually takes me a few minutes after waking to achieve full consciousness. So I suspect this trick would work on me.
Ironwood Daily Globe - Nov 7, 1958
Go Answer the Phone, Said Bedroom Stranger
SEATTLE (AP)—Darwin Barker was awakened by a man at the foot of his bed who told him to "go answer the phone."
Groggy with sleep, Barker staggered into another room to the telephone. The ringing awoke him completely.
He rushed back into his bedroom but by that time the man was gone. So were Barker's trousers, wallet and $1.25.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.