Matt Novak

In The Future, All Women Will Be Amazons

January 20, 2012

A Mobile Phone From 1922? Not Quite

History often plays linguistic tricks on us, especially when it comes to rapidly changing technologies

January 17, 2012

Trade Your Trouble for a Bubble

Sightseeing across the country in an atomic-powered "pleasure ball"

January 13, 2012

Moving Sidewalks Before The Jetsons

The public's fascination with the concept of "movable pavement" extends back more than 130 years

January 11, 2012

Mobsters Tremble Before the Crime-Fighting, Red Flying Gondola

Science-fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback predicted that, as long as police officers were stuck on terra firma, criminals always would have the edge

January 6, 2012

One Newspaper to Rule Them All

January 3, 2012

The Future’s War on Cancer

Scientific progress during the 20th century prompted a number of predictions about an impending cure

December 29, 2011

Santa’s Trusty Robot Reindeer

A special visit from the Ghost of Christmas Retro-Future

December 23, 2011

The Fanciful, Chocolate-Filled World of 2012

In 1912, the French chocolate company Lombart printed a series of six collectible cards envisioning daily life one hundred years in the future

December 19, 2011

Giant Automatic Highway Builders of the Future

Radebaugh's vision of a road-creating machine may not have been a figment of just his imagination- a Disney-produced television program had a similar idea

December 16, 2011

Boxing Robots of the 1930s

Jack Dempsey boasted he could tear apart a robot opponent "bolt by bolt and scatter its brain wheels and cogs all over the canvas"

December 13, 2011

Senator Barry Goldwater Imagines Arizona in the Year 2012

The Republican senator and 1964 presidential candidate predicted the growth of the Sun Belt and envisioned an open border with Mexico

December 7, 2011

Weather Control as a Cold War Weapon

In the 1950s, some U.S. scientists warned that, without immediate action, the Soviet Union would control the earth's thermometers

December 5, 2011

Pollster George Gallup Jr. Looks to the Year 2000

November 30, 2011

A Thanksgiving Meal (in-a-pill)

The future of food was envisioned by many prognosticators as entirely meatless and often synthetic

November 23, 2011

A Whole Town Under One Roof

We're moving on up—visions of a self-contained community within a 1,000-foot tall skyscraper

November 18, 2011

1968′s Computerized School of the Future

A forward-looking lesson plan predicted that "computers will soon play as significant and universal a role in schools as books do today"

November 16, 2011

Zipping from San Francisco to Oakland in 5 Minutes

An inventor's plans for traveling inside a giant bullet would have made a trip across the Bay a fast one

November 14, 2011

Would You Pass the Panic-Proof Test?

If an atomic bomb drops on your house, a civil defense official advises: "Get over it."

November 9, 2011

Arthur Radebaugh’s Shiny Happy Future

For five years, a popular comic strip gave us a preview of life in Suburbatopia

November 4, 2011