The future will be televised

Paleofuture looks at a 1951 version of the future surveillance society. 

Vintage atomics

The Unwanted Blog features this cutaway of a nuclear rocket engine from 1962

Dough boys on the Moon

An now, the US Army's 1959 design for a lunar lander.

It may not have gone to the Moon, but it did look more rockety than the LEM.

The Future of Food

Popular Science trolls its archives to look at the future of food.  Some of the items are interesting, such a the one illustrated here that talks about converting gases directly into food, others are embarassing, as in howlers like this:

Fruits and vegetables were bleached (sic) in boiling water to help retain their color.

I think he meant "blanched".

Then there's the opening bit about urban farming that both in the modern and archived bit forgets that it wasn't that long ago that livestock was raised in the city, which is why the only ones who do so today are hobbyists.

Groovy computers

Retrospace has a stunning retrospective on mainframe computers in the days when computers were practically architecture instead of things you tuck in your pocket.

The jobs of 2012

Paleofuture looks at the jobs of 2012 as seen from 1982.

Please don't mention the "peace analysts:, though.  The same people who thought "diversity managers" were a good idea might be listening.

Things to Come

Nikola Tesla wasn't God

Forbes has some neck.  I posed the same thesis and have suffered years of stick from True believers because of it.

Keep your heads down, lads.

Electronic Bed

Look at this electronic bed of 1945 courtesy of Hugo Gernsback and rescued from obscurity by JF Ptak Science Books LLC.

Among it's technological gadgets is a book rest that pulls out!

There's no end to this age of scientific wonders?

Elektro revisited

Retronaut looks at one of our favourite residents over at Tales of Future Past: Elektro.

Tremble as the "mightiest of all robots" pops a balloon.

Monsanto's Home of the Future

Monsanto was very proud of its plastic home. 

Flying Ram raiders

We need them and we need them now!

Educational television

Paleofuture looks at the Future Past of schooling via the talking aquarium. 

Flying Drainpipe: 1957

VSTOL passenger plane: 1955

True aviation coolness courtesy of The Eagle.

Space fashions: comic book division

The Gold Key comic book Space Family Robinson not trumped the television series Lost in Space by introducing the concept of the Swiss Family Robinson years before Irwin Allen, it also let the readers know what the well-dressed 21st century teenager would be wearing.

Lots of ski pants, apparently.

Always something, isn't there?

A wonder machine of farming.  So, why does it take four men to operate it?

Life in the year 2001

Apollo's arms

In the early 1970s, NASA designer Caldwell Johnson came up with this idea for using surplus Apollo equipment by equipping the CSMs with robot arms.
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This study was cancelled; partly due to budget constraints, but mainly because it looked scary beyond all reason.

Electronic Car

I don't know which is cooler; the dashboard of the self-illuminating tarmac.