Matt Novak

Matt Novak

 

Matt Novak is the author of the Paleofuture blog, which can now be found on Gizmodo.

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Surgery, Security and Sales: The Future of Closed-Circuit Television

Just as people were experimenting with the uses of broadcast TV in the 1930s, so too were they envisioning ways to utilize closed-circuit TV in the 1950s

Sol G. Atlas' vision to transform Ellis Island into an entertainment center

The 1958 Plan to Turn Ellis Island Into a Vacation Resort

Give me your huddled masses yearning to go shopping and swimming

The Theme Building at the Los Angeles International Airport, built in 1961

Googie: Architecture of the Space Age

The futurist design movement that divided critics and and swept the nation with space age coffee shops

Mitsugu Watarai with Ken-chan

The Rise and Fall of Ken-chan, the $43,000 Robot Waiter

The spaghetti-slinging robot drew crowds at Grazie’s Italian Restaurant in Tokyo

The automobile of 1973 as imagined in 1923 on the cover of Science and Invention magazine

1923 Envisions the Two-Wheeled Flying Car of 1973

As cars got larger in the 1920s, the "Helicar" was presented as the solution to congested city streets

Thomas Scott Baldwin's airship at the St. Louis Exposition

Don’t Let Your Money Fly Away: A 1909 Warning to Airship Investors

Flying aboard aircraft? Just a passing fad

A professor of the future gives a lecture via television (1935)

Predictions for Educational TV in the 1930s

Before it became known as the "idiot box," television was seen as the best hope for bringing enlightenment to the American people

Four-person helicopter of the future (1944)

Big Things Ahead… But Keep Your Shirt On

Americans in the 1940s had wondrous expectations about the post-war world. Meet one author who advised them to curb their enthusiasm

A woman is made to smell her partner's body odors to see if they're suitable for marriage

Mechanical Matchmaking: The Science of Love in the 1920s

Four "scientific" tests to determine whether your marriage will succeed or fail

1966-67 AAA map of New York

Maps of the Future

A 1989 prediction about portable GPS devices was right on the money

1981 vision of future chemical warfare, causing soldiers to hallucinate

Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture

Was LSD the Soviet Union's secret weapon?

Careers of the future as illustrated by Cy DeCosse for the 1982 book, The Kids Whole Future Catalog

Jobs of the Future: How Accurate Were the Soothsayers of 1982 At Predicting Today’s Top Careers?

College graduates take note: Your dream career as a robot psychologist or nasal technologist is just around the corner

Hugo Gernsback's vision for a monument devoted to electricity (1922)

The Monument to Electricity That Never Was

Marilyn Monroe getting ready for her close-up in a movie of the future

Resurrecting the Dead With Computer Graphics

Digital billboard in 2019 Los Angeles from the film Blade Runner (1982)

Billboard Advertising in the City of Blade Runner

Are Angelenos destined to be perpetually surrounded by super-sized advertisements?

Cover to the April 1938 issue of Popular Science magazine

Rocket to the Stars at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

A trip into space without leaving Earth--or even going outdoors

Editor John Henson of The New Aladdin floppy disk magazine

The Magazine of the Future (on floppy disk!)

More than 20 years before the iPad, an entrepreneur saw the potential of interactive, digital magazines

Robot server at the Two Panda Deli in Pasadena, California

The Disco-Blasting Robot Waiters of 1980s Pasadena

In 1983, a Chinese fast-food restaurant hired a curious-looking pair of servers: Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2

The radio-delivered newspaper machine of 1938

Print the News, Right In Your Home!

Decades before the Internet, radio-delivered newspaper machines pioneered the business of electronic publishing.

Flying ambulance of the future (1927)

The Flying Ambulance of Tomorrow

In the 1920s, a French inventor devised an ingenious way to provide emergency medical assistance

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