Back to the Future!

One of my favorite blogs is Modern Mechanix – Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today. It’s an amazing collection of high-tech stories from the past, culled from Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and the like. An image of each complete story with illustrations appears, and the plain text is included as well.

This is not a once-in-a-blue-moon blog. Each day can bring multiple entries. Yesterday’s post had an article from a 1968 Mechanix Illustrated on the future world of 2008. Pretty dead-on in some instances: “The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.” A bit off in the prediction of “Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries.” But audiobook digital downloads weren’t on most people’s radar five years ago – let alone forty! But hats off to Leonard Feldman, who predicted the world success of the compact disc over the videodisc in this article from 1981.

You can spend hours browsing through the site. I found something for audiobook directors who despair over the rustling and flapping of over-dressed narrator's clothing. Recording studios would love to have this contraption from 1930. And the picture below is from the Just Weird category – I’ll let you provide the LOL cat comment. Can you tell I’m on Spring Break?

Images from http://blog.modernmechanix.com/