Wireless Telephones: The Future from 1950
On December 27, 1950, five years, a few months and days after the end of World War II, the Lumberton, North Carolina Robesonian newspaper ran an Associated Press article in which experts predicted how we will live in the year 2000. This prediction included wireless telephones and transmissions, voice activated homes, and even possibly what they thought would be high definition television.
Here are three of the predictions regarding communications:
- People will live in houses so automatic that push-buttons will be replaced by fingertip and even voice controls. Some people today can push a button to close a window – another to start coffee in the kitchen. Tomorrow such chores will be done by the warmth of your fingertip, as elevators are summoned now in some of the newest office buildings – or by a mere whisper in the intercom phone.
- Wireless transmission of electric power, long a dream of the engineer, will have come into being. There will be no more power lines to break in storms. A simple small antenna on the roof will pick up the current for lighting a house.
- Third dimensional color television will be so commonplace and so simplified at the dawn of the 21st century that a small device will project pictures on the living room wall so realistic they will seem to be alive. The room will automatically be filled with the aroma of the flower garden being shown on the screen.
As you can read, these reading into these predictions is not as complicated as deciphering a Nostradamus prediction. Some of them do appear to be spot on. However, I am glad some predictions are off. I’m definitely happy that ‘aroma’ television isn’t filling my home.