Someone emailed me this image.
The caption of this photo, which was apparently published in the 1954 edition of Popular Mechanics, reads:
Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.
The sad part was the realization that if our science-loving President had been elected fifty years earlier, Popular Mechanics might not have gotten it wrong.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Bob // Nov 24, 2004 at 6:12 am
You might want to check this out:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
2 Rick // Nov 24, 2004 at 8:35 am
That’s what happens when I don’t trust my gut!
I thought the picture looked a little odd with all the dials and the steering wheel. I also thought I’d read predictions from the ’50s of much smaller computers.
And — coinkydinkally — I spent about an hour or two yesterday reading “When Pancakes Go Bad,” which is about how to make realistic-looking fake pictures in Photoshop.
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