December 29, 2011
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the formal declaration of the War on Cancer. When President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act on December 23, 1971 he described the legislation as a “national commitment for the conquest of cancer.” The Act expanded federal funding for cancer research and Nixon said that he hoped, “in the years ahead that we may look back on this day and this action as being the most significant action taken during this Administration.”
The term, “war on cancer” wasn’t coined in the 1970s but dates back at least to the early 1900s. Somewhat ironically, a series of promotional cards packaged with cigarettes in the 1930s included a card that explained how the latest cutting edge technology could help win the “War on Cancer.”
When scientists first begin to create synthetic radio-activity, to make substitutes for radium, by bombarding certain atoms with millions of electron-volts, someone suggested, “Why make radium to cure cancer? Use the bombarding atoms direct.” This suggestion was adopted by the use of very high voltage X-rays. Many successful experiments have been made.
The 1956 book 1999: Our Hopeful Future by Victor Cohn includes a chapter called “Medicine’s promise: long, lively life.” Cohn was a science and health reporter at the Minneapolis Tribune before moving to the Washington Post in 1968 and began writing a weekly health column called “The Patient’s Advocate.” In his book, Cohn doesn’t mince words when articulating the optimism people of the 1950s had for medical breakthroughs:
If any field is on the move today, it is medicine. If any offers hope and promise to average people, this is it. Medicine today outdates much of the medicine of ten years ago, or five years, or one. A number of diseases are being conquered, and new keys are opening biological doors. Average life expectancy, today at an all-time high, could in our generation increase ten more years.
Cohn goes on to explain how people thought a cancer cure might be found:
In cancer a possibility is surgical meddling with glands. Surgeons are already removing adrenal glands in experiments to treat prostate and breast cancer. Medicine feverishly seeks to identify the chemical environment that permits uncontrolled cell growth, and to understand how cells grow. Uncontrolled growth is the one element common to all cancers.
The 1973 book 1994: The World of Tomorrow published by U.S. News and World Report includes a chapter on what people can expect of medicine by the mid-1990s. While the book is optimistic, it doesn’t have the same faith that Cohn had in the 1950s. Dr. Michael B. Shimkin, whose population studies at the National Cancer Institute in the 1950s would help show a link between smoking and lung cancer, is quoted in the book:
Although truly useful drugs for the treatment of cancer are still in the future, there is no reason but to be optimistic that they eventually will be found… Cancer research is but a small segment of the total human endeavor in biomedical sciences. It can advance only as rapidly as progress is recorded in the various “disciplines,” where the boundaries are academic conveniences… Cancer research has no place for limited or fixed concepts, for vested interests, for orthodoxy. But we can stand firm on this: cancer is a solvable problem, solvable by a human thought and action process that we call scientific research, and within capabilities of human intelligence with which man was endowed by his Creator.
December 23, 2011
When I was a kid I would’ve given just about anything to see a hoverboard under the family Christmas tree. Back to the Future II came out in 1989 (when I was six years old) and the movie promised kids like me a world of hoverboards and ubiquitous product placement by the year 2015. I even occasionally get emails from people who ask if hoverboards are real. These people vaguely remember seeing a short promotional documentary when they were kids about the making of BTTF2, which included a joke about hoverboards from director Robert Zemeckis. With a smirk that was obviously too subtle for the kiddies, Zemeckis claimed that hoverboards were real, but that child safety groups wouldn’t let them be released into stores. I’ve broken many a dear reader’s heart by sending out that link.
Alas, hoverboards still aren’t real (at least not in the way that BTTF2 envisioned them) and I never saw one under our Christmas tree. But the latter half of the 20th century still saw plenty of predictions for the Christmas celebrations of the future — everything from what kind of technologically advanced presents would be under the tree, to how visions of Santa Claus may evolve.
The 1981 book Tomorrow’s Home by Neil Ardley includes a two page spread about the Christmas presents and celebrations of the future. If we ignore the robot arm serving Christmas treats, Ardley pretty accurately describes the rise of user-generated media, explaining the ways in which the household computer will allow people to manipulate their video and musical creations:
Christmas in the future is an exciting occasion. Here the children have been given a home music and video system that links into the home computer. They are eagerly trying it out. The eldest boy is using the video camera to record pictures of the family, which are showing on the computer viewscreen. However, someone else is playing with the computer controls and changing the images for fun. At the same time, another child is working at the music synthesizer, creating some music to go with the crazy pictures.
But what of my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers? What were they told as children about the Christmases to come? Below we have a sampling of predictions from the 1960s and 70s about what the Christmas festivities of the future would look like. Some of these predictions were made by kids themselves — people who are now in their 50s and 60s.
The November 28, 1967 issue of the Kingston, Jamaica newspaper The Gleaner ran a story by Londoner Carole Williams imagining what Christmas of the year 2000 would look like. It’s interesting that Williams spends the first paragraph acknowledging that the year 2000 could very well be a nightmarish, Orwellian dystopia wherein Santa lies dead in a snowbank:
Christmas in the Big Brother world of George Orwell did not exist at all; Santa Claus was dead. Indeed, he had never lived. Many eminent sociologists are today profoundly pessimistic at a rate of social progress which is carrying mankind swiftly, it seems, towards Big Brother living.
But to take the optimistic view that Christmas 2000 will be just as much a Christian celebration as now leads to interesting speculation. Firstly, Christmas Day 2000 will be the greatest festival ever known simply because of the anniversary. The events of Christmas 1000 will no doubt be recreated with techniques to envisage now, as a centre-piece of global festivity.
Williams continues to describe a jolly world that is connected by a vast network of videophones:
On Christmas Day 2000, greetings will be sent around the world in colour by television, person to person, as simply as a telegram. There will be two TV systems in every home: one for news and entertainment, the other for personal use, linked to telephone networks. Thus Mr Smith in Hong Kong will dial his home in London from his hotel room, say Happy Christmas and watch his children open their presents.
What will be in those bright, bulky packages only Father knows, but he will have had a staggering variety of gifts to choose from. More popular than today, probably, will be travel vouchers — tickets for supersonic weekend tours of, say, Kenya, or Brazil — anywhere where wild animals and vegetation are still free and unchecked. A ticket to Tokyo from London will cost about 100 dollars in the new world currency. 100 dollars will represent perhaps one week’s pay for a medium-grade computer operator.
Very young children will find midget colour TV sets, no larger than today’s transistor radios, in their Christmas stockings, and tiny wire recorders. Toys will probably be of the do-it-yourself variety — building go-karts powered by selenium cells, with kits for making simple computer and personal radars (of the type chests will use in Blind Man’s Buff). Teenagers will get jet-bikes, two seater hovercraft and electronic organs, the size of a small desk, that will compose pop tunes as well as play them.
The piece also explains that the most glorious Christmas celebration won’t even occur on the earth. Remember that this was 1967, two years before humans would set foot on the moon.
The most extraordinary Christmas in the year 2000 will without a doubt be the one spent by a group of men on the moon — scientists and astronauts of maybe several nations carried there in American and Russian rockets, establishing the possibility of using the moon as a launch-pad for further exploration.
They will be digging for minerals, looking at planets and earth through electronic telescopes so high-powered that they will be able to pick out the village of Bethlehem. Their Christmas dinner will be from tubes and pill bottles, and it is extremely unlikely that any alcohol at all will be allowed — or an after-dinner cigar.
Williams explains that the religious festivities surrounding Christmas will likely be the same as they were in 1967, but the buildings of worship will be different:
Down on earth, religious celebrations will continue as the have done for the previous two thousand years, but in many cities the churches themselves will have changed; their new buildings will be of strange shapes and design, more functional perhaps than inspirational and hundreds of them will be interdenominational, a practising symbol of ecumenicalism.
The Dec 23, 1976 Frederick News (Frederick, MD) looked a little deeper into the future and described Christmas in the year 2176.
Just imagine what Christmas would be like 200 years from now: An electronic Santa Claus would come down the chimney because everyone is bionic and Santa Claus should be, too. Christmas dinner may consist of sea weed and other delicacies from the deep. Mistletoe would only be placed in aristocratic homes because it would be much too expensive for the average family to buy.
There would be no such thing as Christmas shopping, because all the ordering can be done from home by an automatic shopping device.
Children would no longer have to wait so impatiently for the Christmas holiday to officially close schools, because you would only have to unplug the electronic classroom connector each student would have in his home. There would be no worry of what to do with the Christmas tree after the season, because it would have to be replanted and used again the following year.
The Lethbridge Public Library in Canada held a Christmas short story contest in 1977. The winners were published in December 24 edition of The Lethbridge Herald. Little Mike Laycock won first prize in the 9-10 year old category with his story titled, “Christmas in the Future.”
It was the night before Christmas, in the year 2011, and in a castle far away, a man named Claus was scurrying down a gigantic aisle of toys. Now and then he stopped in front of an elf to give him directions.
“Hurrying, hurrying,” he mumbled, “will I ever get some rest?” Finally everything was ready and the elves began to load the sled. Rudolph and all the other reindeer had grown long beards, and were too old to pull the sled anymore. So Santa went out and bought an atomic powered sled. It was a smart idea because in the winter nothing runs like a (John) Deere.
Well, if you could have seen the pile of toys you would have been amazed! There were piles of toys fifteen feet tall! Soon all the toys were loaded. Santa put on his crash helmet, hopped into the sled and brought the cockpit cover down. He flicked a few switches, pressed a few buttons, and he was off. Zooming through the air at sublight speed, he delivered toys to places like China, U.S.S.R., Canada, U.S.A. etc.
He flew over the cities dropping presents. He dropped them because each present had a small guidance system that guided the presents down a chimney. Then parachutes opened and the presents gently touched the ground.
It was snowing heavily and the ground was glittering with beauty. The stars were shining, the moon was full, and there, painted against the sky, was Santa, zooming across the sky in his atomic powered sled.
This drawing by 13-year-old Dennis Snowbarger appeared in the November 28, 1963 Hutchinson News (Hutchinson, Kansas). Dennis won second place in a contest the newspaper put on. It would appear that Dennis’s art was inspired by the TV show The Jetsons, whose original 24 episode run was from late 1962 through early 1963.
The “Junior Edition” of the San Mateo Times (San Mateo, CA) was promoted as being “by children, for everyone.” In the December 17, 1966 edition of the Junior Edition, Bill Neill from Abbott Middle School wrote a short piece which imagined a “modern Santa Claus” in the year 2001. In Bill’s vision of Christmas future, not only does Santa have an atomic-powered sleigh, he also has robot reindeer!
It is the year 2001. It is nearing Christmas. Santa and all his helpers were making toy machine guns, mini jets (used like a bike), life-size dolls that walk, talk and think like any human, electric guitars, and 15-piece drum sets (which are almost out of style).
When the big night arrives, everyone is excited. As Santa takes off, he puts on his sunglasses to protect his eyes from the city lights. Five, four, three, two, one, Blast Off! Santa takes off in his atomic-powered sleigh and his robot reindeer.
Our modern Santa arrives at his first house with a soft landing. After Santa packs up his portable chimney elevator, fire extinguisher and gifts, he slides down the chimney. These motions are repeated several billion times.
Things have changed. The details of how Santa arrives has changed and will continue to change, but his legend will remain.
Original illustration of robot Santa by Will Pierce.
Read more articles about the holidays with our Smithsonian Holiday Guide here
December 19, 2011
With the year 2012 just around the corner, people from the year 1912 might be disappointed to learn that we don’t have ubiquitous rooftop airports or 8-hour trips to the moon.
In 1912 (a year best remembered for the sinking of the Titanic) the French chocolate company Lombart commissioned future-themed illustrated cards to be included with their confectionary. (The cards were produced by the Norgeu family of printers, who had a reputation in France for doing high quality work.) Some companies in the early 20th century often packaged promotional cards with their foodstuffs and tobacco. Consumers were encouraged to collect the entirety of a series, hopefully boosting sales of a particular product in the way that McDonald’s Happy Meal toys are sold and collected today. The series of six cards below was called “En l’an 2012″ which translates to “in the year 2012,” and are illustrated with that special brand of dirigible-laced whimsy that arists were so fond of in the early 20th century. The series has a lot of similarities to other promotional cards of the era, including cards produced for German chocolate company Hildebrands around 1900 and another series produced in France between 1900 and 1910.
Unsurprisingly, the Lombart cards share a common theme: How the technology of the future will enable the task of purchasing ever-larger quantities of Lombart chocolate.
This card pictured the flying machine of the future, with a man reminding his house staff not to forget the Lombart chocolate.
This card shows parents in France speaking to their son in an unspecified Asian country via picturephone. They assure their son that they’ll send him Lombart chocolates by way of aircraft soon.
This card shows Lombart chocolate being delivered by airship from France to London.
A man tells the driver of a flying machine to stop for some chocolate.
This card shows people traveling to the moon in the year 2012. The trip was supposed to take just eight hours from Paris.
This card shows someone using an intercom, asking the submarine captain to stop at an underwater station so that they might pick up some Lombart chocolate.
These cards were found in the book The History of the Future: Images of the 21st Century by Christophe Canto and Odile Faliu.
December 16, 2011
After President Eisenhower pushed legislation in 1956 that would radically expand the U.S. highway system, artists began to imagine which technologies might shape our highway-rich future. These weren’t your father’s superhighways of tomorrow. These were highways built for self-driving cars; highways stretching from Alaska to Russia; highways running through the bottom of the sea.
The August 3, 1958 edition of Arthur Radebaugh‘s Sunday comic “Closer Than We Think” envisioned highways built by gigantic machines. These machines would roll along the untouched land, clearing a path with a tree crushing mechanism in front, and pour concrete out its rear, leaving a perfect highway in its wake. The text accompanying the comic explained:
Tomorrow’s turnpikes will “flow” out of giant machines like magic ribbons across the countryside. The basic equipment is already in existence; only a few improvements are needed.
The forward section of such a road-builder would be a variant of the new jungle-smashing LeTourneau “tree-crusher” combined with a grader. The middle section would pour concrete in a never-ending flow, with the rear portion leveling the still soft pavement. A line of freighter helicopters would be on hand to feed the behemoth with the material necessary to keep it moving across any type of country.
Where did old Art get such a silly idea? Radebaugh was likely inspired by an episode of Disneyland* which aired just a few months earlier. Magic Highway, U.S.A. was originally broadcast on ABC on May 14, 1958 and depicted the glorious future of hovercars and automation that exemplify mid-century, techno-utopian futurism. The episode also showed various automatic highway builders, including the one below. The narrator explains that “in one sweep a giant road builder changes ground into a wide finished highway.”
Hosted by Walt Disney, narrated by Marvin Miller (Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet), and directed by Ward Kimball, Magic Highway, U.S.A. is a perfect artifact of the era, with a heavy emphasis on the family car. Watching the episode today, it amazes me that the episode wasn’t broadcast in color until July 29, 1962. The incredibly lush color palette of the animated sequences are truly what make the episode so stunning and may explain why TV critics gave it terrible reviews when it first aired, describing the future as “hideous if Disney artists have their way.”
*People are often confused when I refer to Disneyland as a TV program. From 1954 until the fall of 1958, ABC aired Walt Disney’s TV program Disneyland, which would change names many times over the years. In the fall of 1958 Disneyland would become Walt Disney Presents, then Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color in the 1960s, The Wonderful World of Disney throughout the 1970s, and maybe half a dozen more iterations throughout the 1980s, 90s and 2000s. The name I remember from my childhood was The Magical World of Disney, which was the title when Michael Eisner was hosting the show from 1988 until 1996.
December 13, 2011
The Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots toy is both a vivid and lukewarm memory of my childhood. I remember playing the plastic fighting game with my friend Matt (apparently Matt was quite a popular name for boys born in the early 1980s in the suburbs of St. Paul) and being terribly underwhelmed. There’s just about nothing cooler than fighting robots (unless it involves Hugh Jackman), but banging on chintzy plastic buttons that give you all of two options (left punch and right punch) and one outcome (the robot’s head pops up) left much to be desired. Originally introduced in 1964, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em remains a popular toy today, but I can’t help but think they could’ve taken some advice from those who were dreaming up fighting robots in the 1930s. Who would’ve thought that the 1930s was the Golden Age of boxing robots?
In the April, 1934, issue of Modern Mechanix and Inventions the “mechanical robot” goes toe-to-toe with boxing legend Jack Dempsey. In the article Dempsey relays a conversation he had with a friend about what it would be like to fight a robot. According to Dempsey — who says he could tear one to pieces “bolt by bold and scatter its brain wheels and cogs all over the canvas” — the main deficiency of a boxing robot would be its lack of brains:
“The reason is simple: Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game. It is true enough that we have had some rare intellectual specimens in the higher frames of boxing glory, but I can truthfully say that no man ever attained genuine boxing recognition without real headwork. The best punch in the world is not worth a whoop if the boxer doesn’t know what to do with it.”
The January, 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics magazine (a publication that changed names many times in the 1930s) ran a short story about two brothers in California who had created a robotic boxing match. The illustration that was included in the piece is quite evocative that of the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em toy:
Two pugilistic robots, built by the Veronda brothers, of California, recently staged a furious six round boxing match in which they slugged each other’s metal bodies with all the realism of a human fight. The actions of the mechanical fighters were controlled by short wave radio. At the height of the fray, however, the wires got crossed somewhere. With smoke rising from their innards the fighters lost their heads and began lashing out wildly, dealing terrific clouts with both fists. Finally one robot went down and the other collapsed on top of him.
In June of 1933 Walt Disney released a short animated film titled Mickey’s Mechanical Man, starring his still relatively new hero, Mickey Mouse. In the film Mickey builds his own robot to fight a gorilla named The Kongo Killer — a reference to the movie King Kong, which had been released earlier that year. In this “Battle of the Century” which pits man against beast, the usual animated hijinks ensue, but it’s interesting that neither the gorilla nor the robot are in very good shape by the fight’s end. You can watch Mickey’s Mechanical Man on YouTube.
Al Capp’s syndicated comic strip, Li’l Abner had a strip that ran in newspapers on July 18, 1937 which featured a fighting robot. What drives this robot to fight? According to the professor who invented him, “My robot is perfect — except for one flaw — he becomes a savage murderous machine of destruction in the presence of smoke – simple tobacco smoke.”
It’s interesting to notice the shift in attitudes toward smoking in the 1930s, when U.S. tobacco companies had started to spend a great deal more money on advertising in the wake of alcohol Prohibition and the temperance movement. The robot in this comic most likely represented those who opposed smoking. As K Michael Cummings notes in his 2002 paper “Programs and policies to discourage the use of tobacco products”:
At the turn of the century the anti-smoking movement in the United States was motivated mainly by moral and religious beliefs, although medical objections against cigarettes were beginning to be raised. Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford voiced concerns about the detrimental health effects of cigarette smoking. In the first quarter of the twentieth century groups such as the Non-smokers Protective League, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and religious leaders joined forces to prohibit the sale of tobacco and alcohol. However, the negative backlash against the federal prohibition on alcohol coupled with the more pragmatic approach of allowing governments to tax tobacco as a way of controlling its use resulted in the rescinding of most state and local prohibitions against tobacco.
By the 1930s efforts to limit smoking were fading away, allowing tobacco manufacturers to compete vigorously against one another by spending tens of millions annually in advertising to promote their brands. Cigarette advertisers were successful in associating smoking with images of health, athletic performance, wealth, and social standing which helped fuel a nearly three decade long increase in the prevalence of smoking.