Yesterday's Tomorrows

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future. By Joseph J. Corn and Brian Hogan. Katherine Chambers, editor. Washington, D.C. and New York City: The Smithsonian Institution/Summit Books, 1984. Rpt. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. "Originally published in a hardcover edition by the Smithsonian Institution [...] and Summit Books, New York." "Yesterday's Tomorrows was prepared by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service under the direction of Andrea Price Stevens, publication office," to supplement and summarize the exhibit. Copiously and highly usefully illustrated.

Includes a Foreword, Preface, Epilogue, and Index, plus a bibliography of "Suggested Reading" and a "Catalogue List" for the exhibit, which could prove highly useful for the study of images relevant for the human/machine interface. Five central chapters:

• Chapter One: Finding the Future
• Chapter Two: The Community of Tomorrow
• Chapter Three: The Home of Tomorrow
• Chapter Four: The Transportation of Tomorrow
• Chapter Five: The Weapons and Warfare of Tomorrow 

Discussions and illustrations include Sunday comics and popular radio and TV shows, and movies: see especially "Finding the Future on the Airwaves," pp. 21-31, covering Buck Rogers in the 25th Century through classic Star Trek.[1]

Notable illustrations — among many — include (italics removed):

Frank R. Paul Amazing Stories back cover, August 1939 (detail), Cover (see also opposite p. 1).

Harry Grant Dart "A Transport of the Future," Literary Digest 26 April 1919, Frontis — a highly impressive if implausible winged lighter-than air airship, with some elements resembling aeroplanes/airplanes of the World War I period. See also p. 90.

Syd Mead, Preliminary art for BLADE RUNNER: Cityscape at night, p. x.

Frank R. Paul, cover illustration, Amazing August 1928 — man flying with jetpack of some sort, from E. E. Smith's Skylark of Space, but "generally mistakenly identified as Buck with his flying belt," given that this issue introduced the Buck Rogers story with "Armageddon — 2419 A.D.," p. 9.

Futuristic ads for, among other products, "Are You Reader for Futurama?" Life March 1958 — Revlon's "Futurama" lipstick case and lipstick (with a thoroughly-modern female model adding very much 1950s sex appeal); S. S. Futura, Newsweek 1943 — highly futuristic luxury cruise ship used to sell Seagram's V.O. Canadian Whisky — p. 13.

Buck Rogers toys and games, 1930s-1940, including an "Atomic Pistol," "Supersonic Two-Way Trans-Ceiver" communications device, and at least pictures of various kids of spacecraft, [p. 22].

"Atomic" toys ca. 1955-1965 "Toy ray guns" 1934-68, and cheap "Toy robots ca. 1945-65. Note that "The first futuristic toy ever marketed was a gun — the Buck Rogers Rocket Pistol XZ-31, brought out by the Daisy Air Rifle company for the 1934 Christmas season [...]" — pp. 28-29.

Syd Mead, Megastructure ca. 1969, "commissioned by United States Steel for a publicity portfolio of renderings of future cities and transportation machines. — [p. 57], a floating city, that looks like a large hemispherical spaceship; cf. and contrast the "Cities in Flight" of James Blish, the mothership of E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, the Death Stars of various STAR WARS movies and stories, and the very much land-bound archeology of Oath of Fealty and similar self-contained cities.

"General Houses hypothetical advertisement, "We Will Deliver This House," Fortune 1932. General Houses commissioned (though never used) an advertisement offering speed and ease of deliver of its trim little machine for living." — p. 73. Note also in through here association of pre-fab houses with Ford cars.

The Technocrats' Magazine, 1933. "Explaining Technocracy | A Revolution Without Bloodshed." Cover features a rampaging giant robot, threatening small humans. Annotation here says, "This violent scene of robot mayhem embodies the movement's belief that technology was raging out of control and that machinery was threatening civilization" (p. 74). Cf. and definitely contrast view of Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941, and Technocracy with more positive views of techne (technique, expertise), if not always technology.

Photograph: Henry Dreyfus, Locomotive for 20th Century Limited, 1938. "This redesigned Hudson-type locomotive was one of the most striking and beautiful of the era's streamlined steam engines"; cf. and slightly contrast the stylized locomotive pictured in a famous poster (still available in summer of 2020), Exactitude-Etat [2] and other notable images of this locomotive.[3]

Norman Bel Geddes, Model Oceanic Passenger Plane, ca. 1929, and cutaway through fuselage, ca. 1929. Main image features a literal model: see for the monumental in imagined aircraft design: This "giant flying wing, although economically unrealistic and technically naive, nevertheless anticipated the mass transit, public carrier nature of travel in the mature aviation age" (p. 98).

Ford Motor Company, Model Volante Tri-Athodyne, ca. 1956 — what we'd call a hovercraft, of impressive elegance (p. 103).

Electro-Gyro Cruiser, Electrical Experimenter, 1916 (a variation on the theme of the giant tank, as a sort of giant, brutalist, heavily armored bicycle). "Starting in the late nineteenth century, electricity and electrical technology provided a compelling metaphor the thinking about the future. Tomorrow's wars would feature all kinds of 'electro' weaponry [...]. Here, a giant two wheeled war machine gets its stability from an electrically powered gyroscope" (p. 112).

Flying Buzz Saw, Air Wonder Stories 1930. Cover drawing of named weapon, cutting through an ordinary plane after dispatching another one. Edited by Hugo Gernsback (p. 117).

Model of Atomic Powered Tank, U.S. Army Ordnance, 1955. "This concept for a tank powered by atomic energy reflected the optimism Americans in the 1950s had about the future of nuclear power" (p. 122). Note well as a corrective to the impression from post-Apocalyptic American art that many Americans were pessimistic about the potential of some forms of atomic energy (especially in military applications).

Comparison of Equipment Carried by Helicopter Trooper and Horse Cavalryman, Mechanix Illustrated, drawing, April 1956. Note that the helicopter is for one trooper and on the facing page there's a photograph of a soldier on a DeLackner Aerocycle, 1956. "The airborne trooper promises to resurrect the army's long lost eyes and eats, to revive the old light horse cavalry on modern, sky-busting steeds, swifter and more dashing than any thoroughbred of old,'" quoting Frank Tinsley, Mechanix Illustrated 1956. Text notes changing US doctrines for warfare massive and limited and the use of the sort of helicopters crucial for US warfare in Vietnam. Erlich notes that the Aerocycle appears neither swift nor dashing but does look designed by people who thought the Light Brigade cavalry celebrated by Alfred, Lord Tennyson had won a victory.[4]

Space Fighter of Tomorrow, Robert McCall, 1961. Laser Weapon in Space, ca. 1982. "The two images offer polar visions of the 'Star Wars' of the future. The space fighter of tomorrow looks nostalgically backward to the fighter pilots of World Wars I and II, and those single combat warriors who like brave knights dueled chivalrously in the clouds, and, if they lost, met death alone in flames. Laser weapons in space," shown aseptically blasting a hammer and sickle, "looks forward to an era of electronically controlled, space-based weapons that would threaten everyone on the planet" (p. 134).

RDE, Initial Compiler, 13July20