Delayed Education in the Year 2000 (1937)

The July 8, 1937 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) ran a blurb about predictions for the year 2000. Apparently, children won't attend school until they reach ten years of age. The entire blurb appears below.

A Columbia university educator, addressing students at the University of California at Los Angeles, predicted that "by the year 2000, we won't send children to school until they are 10 years old." He said that "while they are young, we will keep them busy building healthy bodies in the fresh air". Evidently, he doesn't know the mammas. They want to get their children into school as early as possible. One of the reasons for the development of the kindergarten is to hasten the time when even devoted mothers can get a little freedom from the demands of their children. But the year 2000 is a long way in the future.

See also:
French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

Newton the Household Robot (1989)

Ablestmage.com (via Waxy.org) points us to terrific video of a personal household robot named Newton. "He" was marketed by the company SynPet in 1989 with this VHS promotional video.

If you do nothing else, (in the short time we have here on Earth), at least skip ahead to minute 6:20 in the video. The Newton theme song just became the unofficial theme song of the Paleo-Future blog.

This is Newton. Technologically advanced, user-friendly, and practical. In future homes, personal robots will be commonplace. Newton, by SynPet, brings the future home to you.

[Cue awesome theme song]

You'll be amazed what he can do!
Meet Newton.
Where future and fun go together!
Meet Newton.
He'll be your friend forever! Whenever!
Meet Newton.
He'll be a part of your family!
Meet Newton.
He's a helping hand through technology!
He's a dream come true, bringing the future home to you! He's watching you!
Meet Newton.
Newton!

The still images above were stolen from Megadroid.com, which has more great photos of the Newton.

I've rambled about robot servants on more than a few occasions, but what do you think? Why haven't personal household robots such as these found a market?

See also:
Maid Without Tears (1978)
The Future of Personal Robots (1986)
Robo-Shop (1989)
Japanese Retail Robots (1986)
In a Cashless Future, Robots Will Cook (1996)

Auto-Tutor (1964)

This "auto-tutor" from the 1964 World's Fair is very similar in concept to the "homework machine" we looked at from 1981. The photo above can be found in the Official Souvenir Book of the 1964 New York World's Fair.

AUTOMATED SCHOOLMARM
The Autotutor, a U.S. Industries teaching machine, is tried out by visitors to the Hall of Education. It can even teach workers to use other automated machines.

See also:
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)

Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)

Today, we have more from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. This clip shows the way children of the future will learn. The personal computer, audio lectures and computerized testing are demonstrated. The concept is strikingly similar to the "Answer Machine" of 1964 we looked at a while back.

You can find 1999 A.D. on the DVD Yesterday's Tomorrows Today, released by A/V Geeks.

See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
1999 A.D. Intro (1967)
Online Shopping (1967)
1999 A.D. Controversy
Hawaii as Educational Resort (1970)
The Answer Machine (1964)
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
Project 2000 - Apple Computer (1988)

Women and the Year 2000 (1967)

Glenn T. Seaborg, former chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, wrote a piece for the April, 1967 issue of the Futurist (the second ever!) titled "Women and the Year 2000." An excerpt appears below.

In the year 2000, I think that our society will be much more enlightened than it is today with respect to the role and position of women. By the turn of the century, we will be doing much more to help our women appreciate the diversity of roles they can play and the growing values of high-level skills and education . . .

I also think that in the year 2000 we will attach more importance to education for married women - both as preparation for community service and for re-entry into the labor force when their children reach an age where mothers are more able to work outside the home . . . Housewives in general should have more time for study due to automation, more money for educational expenses due to the expected rise in family incomes, and more opportunities for continuing their education due to the increased availability of local colleges and universities. There will probably be many day care centers to enable student mothers to undertake part-time study, and local colleges may even have supervised nurseries and playgrounds to keep young children occupied while mothers attend class. For mature women wishing to enter the labor force but without marketable skills, there will probably be scholarships and educational guidance counseling of both an academic and vocational nature . . .

Glenn T. Seaborg's 1989 (1964)
Lives of Women to Improve (1923)
Hawaii As Educational Resort (1970)
Hubert H. Humphrey's Future (1967)
Longer Honeymoons, Happier Wives (1923)
Headlines of the Near Future (1972)

GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)

GTE's 1987 concept video Classroom of the Future envisions a bright future for voice synthesis, speech recognition and insanely small monitors. Will's acting career, however, holds less promise.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

See also:
Classroom of the Future (Part 1, 1987)
Classroom of the Future (Part 2, 1987)
Classroom of the Future (Part 3, 1987)
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)

Space Age Lunch Boxes (1950s and 60s)

The Smithsonian has an online exhibit which includes these lunch boxes from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The satellite lunch box from 1958 shows a torodial space station, which is featured prominently in the short film Challenge of Outer Space. Excerpts from the Smithsonian website appear below each picture.

Satellite Lunch Box (1958)

The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in late 1957 sparked interest in the United States in science education even among elementary school children. In 1958, King Seeley Thermos produced this imaginative box evoking space travel and landings on distant moons and planets. Children provided a receptive audience to this imaginary yet hopeful view of scientific achievement in the early years of the space race. This is one of the few pop culture lunch boxes from the late 1950s not designed around a television show.

Jetsons Lunch Box (1963)

Aladdin Industries profited from the success of The Jetsons television cartoon series in the fall of 1963 by introducing a domed lunch box featuring that space-traveling suburban family and their robotic maid. American notions of family life in the 1960s traveled effortlessly outward to interplanetary space on this fanciful box.

Domed metal lunch boxes traditionally were carried by factory employees and construction workers, but Aladdin and other makers found the curved shape made an excellent young person's landscape, ocean scene, or starry sky. Despite the more earth-bound adult concerns of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Kennedy assassination, The Jetsons box and bottle showcase the metal lunch box at the zenith of its design life and its popularity among school children.

(Found in yesterday's USA Today)

See also:
Challenge of Outer Space (circa 1950s)
The Complete Book of Space Travel (1956)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
Man and the Moon (1955)

Classroom of the Future (Part 1, 1987)

The 1987 GTE concept video Classroom of the Future demonstrates videophone technology as an essential tool in making people more productive. Sadly, it doesn't seem like kids of the future are any more intelligent. Check out part one of this paleo-futuristic gem.

See also:
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)

French Prints Show the Year 2000 (1910)

Flying FiremenThe National Library of France (BnF) has an amazing collection of prints from 1910 which depict life in the year 2000. They are credited to Villemard.

There's speculation that they were included with "foodstuffs" of the era, much like the German postcards we looked at back in April.

Car ShoesThe BarberThe Avenue of the OperaA Curiosity
I wonder if the "curiosity" referred to is the horse as an uncommon means of transportation, or the extinction of all animals as referenced in the 1900 Ladies' Home Journal article we looked at a while back.The Electric Train From Paris to BeijingA RescueSpeak to the Caretaker
This image clearly takes its inspiration from another French futurist, Albert Robida, and his book The Twentieth Century.Sentinel Advanced in the HelicopterCyclist ScoutsPhonographic MessageOne For the RoadLady In Her BathroomHeating With RadiumHearing The NewspaperCorrespondence CinemaCars of WarBuilding SiteAt SchoolA Festival of FlowersA Chemical Dinner
It's amazing how long the idea of synthetic food has been with us. Before starting this blog I had assumed that the idea started with the Jetsons.Airship On The Long CourseThe TailorFlying Police

See also:
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Evening Fashions of the Year 1952 (1883)
The Air Ship: A Musical Farce Comedy (1898)
Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)
Collier's Illustrated Future of 2001 (1901)
Predictions of a 14-Year-Old (Milwaukee Excelsior, 1901)
No One Will Walk - All Will Have Wheels (Brown County Democrat, 1900)
The Next Hundred Years (Milwaukee Herold und Seebote, 1901)
What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years (Ladies Home Journal, 1900)
Flying Machines (circa 1885)

Sees World Better or Worse (1923)

Of all the contributions to the February 12, 1923 Bridgeport Telegram article Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence Educational Director of the Rand School, Algernon Lee makes the most non-commital prediction of them all.

A hundred years hence the world will be either a great deal better than now or a great deal worse.

In the field of individual morality we have made a good deal of progress. On the average, we are less cruel more truthful, more capable of mutual understanding, foresight and self-control than our ancestors were. But this does not enable us to solve the problem which arise out of the increasing complexity of our social system and the enormous growth of our powers of production and destruction.

If the world grows better it will be because mankind gets beyond individual [unreadable] and individual morality and develops a capacity for social self-control commensurate with the growth of our mastery over the forces of nature and with the interdependence of human interests which that involves.

See also:
Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence (1923)
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)

Schools on the Move (1982)

You'd need one hell of a permission slip for this field trip.


Classes will never be boring on an airship traveling around the world! Imagine gliding over the Amazon River in South America or retracing Ulysses' journeys through the Greek Islands. Picture what it would be like to hover over the Great Pyramids in Egypt or follow a herd of elephants across the African plains. The University Blimp will turn geography lessons into exciting real-life adventures.


This image of the future can be found in the 1982 book The Kids' Whole Future Catalog.

See also:
The Kids' Whole Future Catalog (1982)
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
Project 2000 - Apple Computer (1988)

The Answer Machine (1964)

Violet Gaze sent in these great images from the 1964/1971 book Childcraft Vol. 6 How Things Change. The paleo-future view of education was exceptionally accurate compared to a lot of other predictions. The homework machine envisioned in 1981 was big, but not altogether wrong.

My favorite element of this two-page spread is the fact that the girl has a hyper-futuristic "answer machine" and yet still uses a typewriter.

See also:
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
Project 2000 - Apple Computer (1988)

Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)

In 1958 Arthur Radebaugh started the syndicated Sunday comic Closer Than We Think! It ran in newspapers until early 1963. The strip really epitomizes the optimistic brand of futurism so common in the post-WWII era. Below are a few great examples of this paleo-futuristic strip from the Chicago Tribune.

Push-Button Education - May 25, 1958
"Teaching would be by means of sound movies and mechanical tabulating machines."


Wrist Watch TV - April 17, 1960
"TV sets the size of postage stamps will soon be worn on the wrist, each with a personal dialing number."


"Pogo" Police Car - May 4, 1958
"Here, for tomorrow, is the concept of policemen on mechanical pogo platforms ..."


Farm Automation - March 30, 1958
"A floating tower will oversee a swarm of robot implements and tractors operated by electronic command."


Gravity in Reverse - June 29, 1958
"Factory-made houses equipped with antigravity machinery could be floated above the ground - to catch the breezes!"


See also:
Word Origins: Imagineering (1947)
Ristos (1979)
Homework in the Future (1981)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)

Homework in the Future (1981)

Forget jetpacks, Martian colonies and floating cities. We may have found the most astonishing claim made by anyone of the paleo-future. According to the 1981 book School, Work and Play (World of Tomorrow), in the future, homework will be fun! Upon hearing the news every child of the early 1980s choked on their bologna sandwich.

Learning by computer in the future will be fun. This computer is displaying a chemistry experiment for the older child and arithmetic problems for the younger one. The computer controls include light pens to draw on the screens. The chemistry student has done something wrong and has caused an explosion!

See also:
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)

Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)

With concepts like "linking to the Education Center in Washington, D.C." AT&T clearly had ideas about the infrastructure of the Internet that didn't quite pan out.

Part 7 of the 1993 video Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future gives us a glimpse of a computer-centered classroom where kids can learn at their own pace, thanks to digital teachers.

See also:
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 1, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 2, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 3, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 4, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 5, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 6, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)

Hubert H. Humphrey's Future (1967)

For the February, 1967 issue of The Futurist magazine, Hubert H. Humphrey, wrote a piece articulating his vision of the future. The Vice President broke up his thoughts into two categories; Developments of the Next 20 Years, and Far-Out Developments by A.D. 2000.

Here are some of the developments we can look forward to within the next 20 years:

In agriculture, the large-scale use of de-salinated sea water.
In medicine, the transplantation of natural organs and the use of artificial ones.
In psychiatry, the widespread application of drugs that control or modify the personality.
In education, the use of more sophisticated teaching machines.
In wordwide communication, the everyday employment of translating machines.
In industry, the extensive use of automation, up to and including some kinds of decision-making at the management level.
In space, the establishment of a permanent base upon the moon.
Some of you might say that there is nothing very surprising here. And you would be right.
Experience shows that it takes 10 to 30 years for a new idea to make its way from its inception in a scientist's mind to its general application in everyday life. Therefore, the world of 20 years from now already exists, in embryo, in today's advanced research establishments.

A theme in 1960's America that seems to pop up repeatedly is faith in a permanent moon base. Tomorrow we'll look at Hubert H. Humphrey's predicitions for the year 2000.

The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)

The 1995 book The Road Ahead by Bill Gates included a CD-ROM with video of what the classroom of the future would look like.



The paleo-future of 1995 is filled with ethnically diverse students academically engaged by the high-tech presentations of their fellow classmates. The teacher brings the class to attention by telling them to "get off the net." Every child has a diverse array of technology at their disposal. The keyboard Mr. Ballard uses is the most confusing of the supposed advances we see in the video.

(Is it just me or was "Mr. Ballard's" presentation completely devoid of useful information?)

A special thanks to Valleywag, who inspired the search for this paleo-futuristic video.