XPost: alt.fan.heinlein, alt.astronomy
Best to view the slideshow at:
https://gizmodo.com/weird-inventions-hugo-gernsback-science-tv-radio-scifi-1849181167
(I like that "Thought Recorder". It is similar to an idea Arthur C.
Clark wrote about. Recording your brainwaves, so that in the future
you can 're-live' great events.)
7 Extremely Weird Inventions From the Grandfather of Science Fiction
Hugo Gernsback published serious tech magazines filled with far-out ideas.
By
Matt Novak
Published5 hours ago
Comments (5)
Hugo Gernsback’s 1925 idea for the “Isolator,” an office invention that allowed workers to cut out distractions.Image: Science and Invention
Hugo Gernsback was a pioneer in the world of science fiction during the
first half of the 20th century—so much so that the Hugo Awards are named after him. But Gernback also edited serious tech magazines and came up
with ideas that were often way ahead of their time. Or, in the case of
the office “isolator” pictured above, simply too weird for any time.
Born in Luxembourg in 1884, Gernsback moved to the U.S. in 1904 and it
wasn’t long before he established himself as a writer with incredibly innovative ideas. In 1908, Gernsback founded his first magazine, Modern Electrics, the world’s first magazine devoted to electronics, often with
a special focus on the budding new tech of radio.
In 1913, he started The Electrical Experimenter, which would become
known as Science and Invention in the 1920s. And in 1919 he founded
Radio News, with Television News launched in 1928, just a couple of
years after the first experimental tests of TV. That doesn’t even
include the sci-fi titles he started like Amazing Stories.
All of these serious-minded tech magazines had at least one article in
every issue by Gernsback, and they often included ideas for futuristic inventions. They’re simply some of the most interesting old ideas for
the future from a century ago.
Above we see Gernsback’s idea for cutting out all office distractions,
dubbed “the isolator,” which was featured in the July 1925 edition of Science and Invention magazine and provided a fascinating snapshot into
the sci-fi pioneer’s mind. You can read about that invention and more by clicking through the slideshow.
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