Remember 1959? You were just 9 years old, with not a care in the world (except maybe nuclear winter). You spread the Sunday paper out across the living room floor of your suburban Chicago home, and excitedly flipped to the funny pages. Closer Than We Think! Your favorite!

What fantastical promise from the future did Mr. Radebaugh have for you this week? Cars that run on sunshine? Tomatoes as big as Verne Gagne's head? Underseas highways to the land of godless commies? No, something even more ridiculous! A home library of electronic media! What a weird futuristic world that would be! Gosh golly, what will they think of next!

Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA's David Sarnoff described recently.

With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you're watching it, you'll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse's Gwilym Price expects such tapes to reproduce shows in three dimensions and color on screens as shallow as a picture.

Another pushbutton development will be projection of microfilm books on the ceiling or wall in large type. To increase their impact on students, an electronic voice may accompany the visual passages.

Eternal thanks to my Closer Than We Think pusher Tom Z., without whom I would be living in a cold, dark world of black and white comic strips.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Movies Will Replace Textbooks (1922)
• Thinks We'll Do Our Reading on Screen (1923)
• Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
• Glenn T. Seaborg's 1989 (1964)
• Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)
• RCA's Two Thousand (1969)
• Media Room of the Future (1979)

Today we have yet another panel from Arthur Radebaugh's excellent Closer Than We Think series of comic strips. Though the strip often ran on Sunday, the more eagle-eyed amongst you (read: nerdy) may notice that this particular strip was published in the Toronto Star Weekly on Saturday, May 2, 1959. 

Before alternative energy policy became a political wedge issue, techno-utopias like Radebaugh promoted renewable energy as sleek and sexy. Solar energy was supposed to power our cars, drive our space colonies and make deserts bloom. As we enter into a new era of optimism --driven by the New Optimists, if you will-- it seems that "the future" just might become less politicized and more dependent upon the scientific, the dynamic and the rational.

But then again, maybe I'm just an optimist.

Don't be surprised if many of tomorrow's homes are built on turntables. They would slowly pivot all day long to receive maximum benefit from health-giving sun ray and insure heat in winter.

This warm and colorful year-round design is adapted from an aluminum firm's summer house which has been studied and admired by architects. It would be built, together with a patio, over a service and garage area.

Ground and living levels would connect through a glass-enclosed staircase. Two-way glass could bring the outside view to those on the inside, while protecting the latter from inquisitive passersby.

Next week: Space Farmers

A special thanks to Tom Z. for a color scan of this strip.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Chrysler VP Predicts Solar-Powered Cars (1958) 
• Solar Power of 1999 (1956)
• Like Earth, Only in Space... and With Monorails (1989)

The September 11, 1960 edition of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think envisioned a type of disaster response vehicle that could seemingly accomplish many of the things people still complain about whenever governments respond to crises. With a decimated infrastructure those "terra tires" (crushing cars, mind you) would certainly come in handy. It's interesting that the illustration gives no clue as to what horror these people must be running from; an uncharacteristically chilling image from pop-utopian Radebaugh.

Tomorrow's methods of coping with catastrophes will make our present-day equipment as obsolete as the horse-drawn drays that handled the San Francisco fire havoc in 1906.

New king-size disaster wagons will face up to any kind of upheaval -- atomic, atmospheric or volcanic. Their low-pressure "terra tire" doughnut wheels will permit movement across any kind of terrain, traffic or wreckage. Supplies will include hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals, blood, dehydrated food and the like.

Such wagons are now in the planning stage for military purposes. Compare also the enormous vehicles already in use as missile carriers, also those used in the mining and logging industries.

Next week: Sub Squelcher

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
• Will War Drive Civilization Underground? (1942)
• Technology and Man's Future (1972)
• Newton the Household Robot (1989)

The April 24, 1960 edition of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think imagined a futuristic world of robot-driven trains. Looking at this image makes me think that someone could produce some pretty awesome steampunk art featuring James J. Hill and a Katrina Van Televox type robot, even though the "robots" described in this strip weren't of the humanoid variety.

Future trains will be fully automatic -- robots that can regulate their own speed and control their own movements to meet the most precise schedules.

The Union Switch and Signal Division is currently working on two kinds of electronic "brains" to make this possible. One type would be a trackside "decision maker," to regulate train speed, routing, starting and stopping. The other would be a "control servo," to signal that the robot train is obeying orders -- or isn't, and why. A central monitoring panel would oversee train movements for hundreds of square miles. The first such installation may be on the New York subway shuttle trains.

Next week: Lunar Power Pack

Thanks to Tom Z. for supplying the color version of this strip.

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Closer Than We Think (1958-1963)
• Farm to Market (1958)
• Speed is Key to Future Travel (1965)
• Car-on-Train Pallet System (1968)
• Robot Drivers (1985)

Imagine a Hypercolor t-shirt. Now, instead of a t-shirt, imagine a car. And instead of a lame 90's fashion fad, imagine a lame 90's automotive fad.

The September 21, 1958 edition of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think illustrated just such a possible fad. I mean... innovation.

 The automobile industry is studying a new kind of specially sensitive car body finish whose color can be changed at will. An electromagnetic gun would emit rays that would instantly "repaint" the car in any desired hue or combination -- perhaps to harmonize with milady's new fall outfit.

D. S. Harder, retired executive vice-president at Ford, recently described research in this direction. He added that this new kind of "photosensitive" surface would also be self-cleaning -- with the silent energy of static electricity or a supersonic vibrator driving off all dust and dirt.

 

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Disney's Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)
• Closer Than We Think (1958-1963)
• Chrysler VP Predicts Solar-Powered Cars (1958)
• Cars Detroit Forgot To Build, 1950-1960
• Flying Family Car (1958)
• GM Car of the Future (1962)

I'd put this retro-futuristic prediction in the "why the hell would you do that?" file.

The August 7, 1960 Chicago Tribune ran this panel of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think, titled "24-Hour Daylight." It imagines a world in which miniature artificial suns illuminate cities of the future. To be fair, those people look like they couldn't be happier. Does sleep deprivation cause some sort of euphoric state?

Man-made balls of fire may be used to light up tomorrow's cities. American scientists are currently pondering an idea along those lines that was first described in technical papers by George Babat, a Russian.

Bendix researcher Donald Ritchie recently reported that balls of light -- actually miniature suns -- might be created by focusing huge transmitting devices so that the rays they generate would cross each other and produce electromagnetic fields. These luminous fields could be used to light up large areas underneath them. Rays would be pointed as necessary to determine exactly where the artificial "sunlight" would fall.

Next week: Missile Movers

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
• Experimental City of the Future (1967)
• Rejuvenated Downtowns (1959)

The March 3, 1959 edition of Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think depicts a highway to Russia, as imagined by Senator Warren G. Magnuson. According to Wikipedia, (the only source for anything that my generation might care about) this was not a new idea. Joseph Strauss, designer of the Golden Gate Bridge, proposed something similar for railroads in the 1890s.

Sen. Magnuson of Washington has a bold new idea for linking our newest state, Alaska, with Siberia via a bridge or vehicular tunnel across the 30- to 40-mile stretch of shallow waters of the Bering Strait. It would go from Wales, on the tip of Seward Peninsula, to Little Diomede and Big Diomede Islands, thence to Peyak, Siberia.

The Senator forecasts this hook-up within the lifetime of the present generation, to create a rail and highway route between points as distant as New York and Paris. "I am convinced," he says, "that the tourists who one day will drive this route will be our best ambassadors!"

Next week: Plastic Schoolhouses

Previously on Paleo-Future:

• How Experts Think We'll Live in 2000 A.D. (1950)
• No Shooting War Before Year 2000 (1949)
• Highways by Automation (1958)
• Closer Than We Think (1958-1963)
• Closer Than We Think! Magic Beam Highway (1961)
• Magic Highway U.S.A. Publicity Stills (1958)