Tomorrow Took a Detour
Flip through an old issue of Popular Mechanics and the future looks completely settled. Writers promised atomic cars and helicopters parked in the backyard, while illustrators painted families playing dominoes as their car cruised down the highway on its own. A few of those ideas eventually showed up in some altered form, usually decades late and entirely different from the pictures. Here's 20 predictions that looked like sure things in print and never made it off the page.
1. Newspapers by Radio
In the late 1930s, a handful of American radio stations tested sending newspapers overnight to fax machines in people's homes. Boosters pictured every family waking up to a freshly printed paper by the radio. The machines were slow and expensive, and the idea fizzled out by the end of the 1940s.
2. The Picturephone
AT&T showed off its Picturephone at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and the press treated video calling as the next household phone. Service launched in Pittsburgh in 1970 and drew so few customers that AT&T eventually pulled the plug. Video calls did show up decades later, on laptops and phones.
3. The Turbine Car
Chrysler built 55 turbine-powered cars in 1963 and loaned them out to 203 ordinary families to test. The engines could run on almost anything that burned, including diesel and kerosene. Chrysler ended the program and destroyed most of the cars.
4. Tube Trains
In a 1965 Scientific American article, engineer L.K. Edwards proposed trains running through vacuum tunnels between Boston and Washington. Gravity would pull each car downhill into the tunnel, and the missing air would cut drag to almost nothing. Sixty years later, the Northeast still rides Amtrak.
5. Monorails Everywhere
Disneyland opened its monorail in 1959, and Seattle built one for the 1962 World's Fair. Illustrators drew monorails snaking between skyscrapers in every big city. Seattle's line still runs for about a mile.
6. Mail by Missile
The Navy fired a Regulus missile packed with about 3,000 letters from a submarine off the Florida coast in 1959. It landed near Jacksonville, and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield told reporters missile mail would arrive before people reached the moon. The Post Office never tried it again.
7. A Wheel in Orbit
Collier's ran a series starting in 1952 in which Wernher von Braun described a giant wheel-shaped space station. Chesley Bonestell's paintings made it look like a sure thing. The International Space Station ended up as a cluster of modules bolted together.
8. The Flying Car
Popular Mechanics and Popular Science put flying cars on their covers for decades. Molt Taylor's Aerocar earned federal certification in 1956, with wings that folded back and towed behind like a trailer. Only a handful were ever built.
9. The Nuclear Vacuum
Vacuum maker Alex Lewyt predicted in 1955 that nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners were probably about 10 years away. The quote lives on in every collection of atomic-age overconfidence. Yours plugs into the wall.
10. Atomic Cars
Ford showed off the Nucleon in 1958, a concept car with a small reactor in the back. It existed only as a scale model with no engine of any kind. Ford pictured drivers swapping out spent reactor cores at service stations.
11. Highways That Drive for You
A 1956 magazine ad from America's Independent Electric Light and Power Companies showed a family playing dominoes while their car steered itself. The ad gave electricity the credit for doing the driving. Today's robotaxis find their way with cameras and software.
12. Nuclear Ships
The NS Savannah went into service in 1962 as a nuclear-powered cargo and passenger ship meant to show off atomic shipping. It cost too much to run and was retired in 1972. No other American nuclear merchant ship followed it.
13. The Plastic House
Monsanto's House of the Future opened at Disneyland in 1957 as a showcase for all-plastic living. According to Disney lore, the wrecking ball bounced right off when crews tore it down in 1967. Nobody lined up to live in one.
14. Blasting Harbors With Bombs
Project Chariot proposed in 1958 to carve a harbor in northwest Alaska with nuclear explosions. Iñupiat residents and scientists pushed back, and the plan was shelved in 1962. Chariot was part of Project Plowshare, the federal effort to find peaceful uses for nuclear blasts.
15. Controlling the Weather
Weather control was a favorite topic in 1950s science magazines. Project Stormfury seeded hurricanes with silver iodide from 1962 to 1983 and never showed a reliable effect. The hurricanes kept doing whatever they wanted.
16. Jet Packs
Bell Aerosystems flew its Rocket Belt in 1961. It carried enough fuel for about 20 seconds of flight. Jet packs show up at Olympic opening ceremonies and almost nowhere else.
17. Supersonic Airliners
Boeing's 2707 was supposed to carry passengers at nearly three times the speed of sound. Congress cut its funding in 1971. The Concorde made its last passenger flight in 2003.
18. Nuclear Bombers
The Air Force flew a modified B-36 with a working nuclear reactor on board 47 times in the 1950s. The crew sat in a cockpit shielded with lead and rubber. The reactor didn't power the plane, and the program ended in 1961.
19. Domes Over Cities
Buckminster Fuller proposed a two-mile-wide dome over Midtown Manhattan in 1960. He argued it would pay for itself in saved snow removal costs. Manhattan passed.
20. The Mile-High Skyscraper
Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled plans for a mile-high tower called the Illinois in 1956, complete with atomic-powered elevators. The tallest building in the world today, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, reaches just over half a mile.
