This Is Your Future
"Your home will be a push-button miracle . . . electronic "maids" will
cook and clean by magic. How would you like to be able to bake a two-layer
cake in a cold oven in six minutes? Press a button and have ultrasonic, or
silent, sound waves wash the dishes? Turn a knob and see an electronic
jigger iron your little daughter's dress? It's all in your future - all in
the house that's going to be a reality at a time not very far away. With
push-button control, you'll make your rooms any size you wish any time.
Perhaps your house will be all plastic. Smaller homes will combine living
room, dining area and kitchen area in one space, with your 3-D color TV set
on one wall and a phono-vision device allowing you to see the person whom
you are telephoning. The microwave oven, a piece of electronic magic already
in production, will be growing in use. You'll mount it in the wall. Your
push-button refrigerator will pop out ice cubes, crushed ice and ice water;
it will carbonate water and, of course, thaw and dispense frozen foods. The
development of hybrid varieties of fruits and vegetables offers enormous
possibilities - new species will come about through atomic radiation of
seeds. You can look for grapes as big as plums, strawberries the size of
apples . . . "
[Some of the items in Fred McNabb's wonderful 1956 illustration and
accompanying text were right on the money while others were the stuff of the
Jetsons (and we wonder if his mid-fifties artwork had any influence on the
creators of that cartoon). The closest it comes to anything like computers
or the Internet is "phono-vision." They promised us the future, but what we
got instead was the 1970s.] :