New This Week at Paleofuture
The 'Telephone Muffler' privacy tool of 1910, the curious chatbot of Bell Labs in the 1970s, and experimental TV in the 1940s.
This Ridiculous 'Telephone Muffler' Was Supposed to Keep Your Conversations Private in 1910
How would the people of 1910 be able to keep their phone conversations private, so that someone sitting nearby couldn’t hear them? Amazingly, someone came up with an invention to solve precisely that problem, but it seems like it would’ve been absolutely ridiculous to use in practice.
TV Experts in 1944 Wondered If Anyone Would Watch During the Daytime
Back in 1944, the U.S. was still fighting in World War II and Americans couldn’t buy a TV in any store, thanks to government restrictions that focused all high-tech manufacturing on the war effort. But that didn’t stop people from speculating what TV would look like after the war. And the predictions from that era are a fascinating glimpse into how enormously popular technologies actually develop.
Newly Opened Time Capsule in San Francisco Was Supposed to Have Special Water From the Middle East
When San Francisco opened a time capsule from 1934 this past Saturday, expectations were set by what appeared in newspapers of the time. The original ceremony in to dedicate the Mount Davidson Cross in the city included a crowd of 50,000 people and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was even there. But at least two of the special items buried with the capsule weren’t there when it was opened over the weekend.
The First Cellphone Call Was Made 50 Years Ago Today and It Was All About Gloating
On April 3, 1973, the first cellphone call was made on a street in New York. And the BBC has a new video marking the anniversary. Marty Cooper, who worked as an engineer at Motorola, called a rival at Bell Labs, meaning the first cellphone call was all about gloating.
The Curious Story of a 1970s Chatbot at Bell Labs Almost No One Remembers
Forbes editor Amy Feldman has a new story about a “chatbot” computer program she remembers from the 1970s dubbed Red Father. She was able to play with the program because her dad worked at Bell Labs, but explains that nobody can find any record of Red Father.
The World's First Drive-In Movie Theater in 1933 Screened the British Comedy 'Wives Beware'
The Aug. 1933 of Popular Science included an illustration depicting the first drive-in movie theater to open in Camden, New Jersey. It was an incredible innovation, as you can tell from the short article below. Long before TV would allow people to watch things from the comfort of their own homes, the drive-in movie theater let people enjoy a semi-private space while watching the latest Hollywood had to offer. Or, in this case, the latest British comedy.