I started the Paleofuture blog in 2007 as part of a writing class I was taking at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. At the time I thought that Id maybe keep it up for just a couple of months. Li...
The May 5, 1958 edition of Arthur Radebaughs Sunday comic, Closer Than We Think, showed off the high-tech school of tomorrow. With hordes of baby boomers flooding into public schools in the 1950s, it...
This picture of the bucket-headed Willie Vocalite appeared in the September 6, 1931 San Antonio Light. Designed by Westinghouse engineer Joseph Barnett, Willie appears to have been programmed with a ...
Ive never thought of my allergies as a big deal. Sure, my peanut allergy has caused an emergency room visit here and there, and my dad used to pick me up from sleepovers because of my emphysema-like ...
When cartoonist Thomas Nast drew this illustration of future Manhattan for Harpers Weekly in 1881, Trinity Church was the tallest building in New York, with its spire and cross reaching 281 feet into...
Planet of the Apes (1968) http://movieposterdb.com Before it became a magazine, The Futurist was launched as a newsletter in 1967. The second issue was released in April of that year and is filled wi...
Its easy to forget -- even for a Disney nerd like myself -- that before Walt Disney died of lung cancer in December of 1966, EPCOT (the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was supposed to b...
In this most gloriously futuristic year of 2011 we somehow find ourselves awash in videophones. In a way, they snuck up on us. And they most certainly didnt show up in the ways that people had been p...
While visiting New York a few years ago I stopped in at the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio). They have quite an extensive collection of TV programs that anyo...
A new exhibit recently opened at the London Transport Museum which will likely be of interest to readers of this humble blog. Called "Sense and the City," the exhibition looks at the cultural...
Between 1918 end of World War I and the 1939 start of World War II, American newspapers sometimes ran stories about how robots would battle in wars of the future. Still shaken from the incr...
Readers of Penthouse magazine were treated to a special "Science and the Future" issue in October of 1978, which acted as a sort of coming out party for OMNI magazine. OMNI, "a magaz...
Weve looked at the multitude of ways that advertisers have used "the future" as a way to position their products as cutting edge or fantastical. Today we have an advertisement from the J...
The Official Souvenir Book of the 1964 New York Worlds Fair includes some gorgeous illustrations of futuristic space exploration. The Fair had phenomenal exhibits showcasing the American push in...
The January, 1987 issue of OMNI Magazine included a cover story titled, "14 Great Minds Predict the Future." OMNI asked influential people from a variety of fields what was in store for ...
Who needs an army of robotic killing machines when youve got planes that look so darn intimidating and futuristic? According to this blurb in the March 29, 1958 Miami News, scaring the enemy to death...
Its no secret that I love food. The first issue of Paleofuture Magazine and the first episode of paleofuture.tv are certainly a testament to that. And some might even consider me an adventurous ...
The 2002 Taschen book Future Perfect is kind of like a dead-tree Tumblr; no credits for illustrators, no dates, and no context. I even tried to reblog a page from the book by nailing it to a tree, bu...
The 1970s was a tough decade for America. As we saw in the second episode of paleofuture.tv, many people were predicting apocalypse. But in 1976, it seems Americans were determined to hold their head...
Every new promise of futuristic technology brings with it the hucksters, the swindlers, and the merely confused. In the 1970s the three-wheeled Dale car was supposed to get seventy miles to the gallo...
Whats the biggest problem people thought wed be facing in the 21st century? Mid-air jetpack collisions? Disobedient robot servants? No, the greatest problem of our futuristic world was supposed to be...
I had to buy stamps recently. It was the worst. Nothing pushes me into full curmudgeon hack mode quite like standing in line at the post office. Were talking Andy Rooney/ Dave Barry lovechild super-c...
This past September I was wandering the shelves of a Half Price Books in Austin, TX when I stumbled upon the most peculiar little book. Titled Nuclear Winter, this book from 1986 was aesthetically un...
This concept sketch of the entrance to Disneylands Tomorrowland is one of the earliest designs for Tomorrowland known to exist. Made in either 1953 or 1954, its not even known what Disney artist sket...
Garco the robot became Garco the music critic for the May 29, 1954 episode of Los Angeles TVs Juke Box Jury. Hosted by Peter Potter, the show appeared on KNXT (now KCBS) and featured a panel of celeb...
While flipping through the 1954 book A Trip Through Space I was struck by one aspect of the interstellar story that Ive never noticed in a pre-Apollo book... a girl in space! Here at Paleofuture...
Readers of the Wall Street Journal may have noticed a familiar byline in the May 23rd edition of the newspaper. For their special report on the future of transportation I looked at retrofuturistic vi...
American companies during World War II often stressed sacrifice in their print advertising. If we can all just be patient, they promised, well have more televisions and personal helicopters and ...
The fine people at Popular Mechanics recently published a book that deserves a prominent place on every retrofuturists bookshelf. The Wonderful Future That Never Was by Gregory Benford looks at ...
This Professor Jyblitts cartoon from 1903 imagines an "automatic luncheon" similar to the automats that began popping up in the early 20th century. In newspaper articles of the 1920s, 30...
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