"The Jetsons" vs. the real 21st century

[bpatrick]

Saw this in my local paper this morning; this year marks 50 years since
"The Jetsons" debuted on ABC, and there was a comparison between the
various devices used on the show and those being used now for real. Here's
a list ("Jetsons" first, real world second):

Household help: Robot maid/Roomba
Indoor sports: Virtual tennis, baseball/Wii
Personal video: TV wristwatch/iPod, iPad
Personal flight: Jet pack/Wingsuit
Computers: Wall-sized reel-to-reel tape/Laptop, silicon chip
Big-screen TV: Yes, with squarish or curvilinear monitors/
Yes--and flat-screen
Videophone: Yes, stationary/Skype
Public telephone: Visaphone booth/What's a phone booth?
Machine dispensing cooked food: Foodarackacycle/Microwave
Space tourism: Common/A couple of billionaires so far
Flying cars: Yes/No. And just as well; you don't want to be
below a flying-car accident.

So "The Jetsons" was fairly accurate in predicting the 21st century.
I wonder how many of the real-world gadgets listed above were inspired
by the show.

 

[landtuna]

Saw this in my local paper this morning; this year marks 50 years since
"The Jetsons" debuted on ABC, and there was a comparison between the
various devices used on the show and those being used now for real. Here's
a list ("Jetsons" first, real world second):

There is a tremendous amount of literary license in those comparisons:

Household help: Robot maid/Roomba - A mechanical vacuum is not a total maid.

Personal flight: Jet pack/Wingsuit - Neither of these is practical nor in common use.

Computers: Wall-sized reel-to-reel tape/Laptop, silicon chip - That was a bank of tape drives on the wall. The actual computer was the size of a refrigerator.

Videophone: Yes, stationary/Skype - I wouldn't call Skype a polished consumer tool just yet.

Machine dispensing cooked food: Foodarackacycle/Microwave - An actual Foodarackacycle would have been the Automart, not a microwave. A microwave is only an oven.

Space tourism: Common/A couple of billionaires so far - And likely not in anyone's future living today.

Flying cars: Yes/No. There have been a succession of prototype flying cars since the 1950's but none have reached practicality. If you think you might one day want to commute to work in your personal flying car go first to any local lake and watch the boaters.

I haven't watched The Jetsons in many decades but didn't George actually carry a briefcase when he shot off to work? Why?

 

[FreddyE1977]

When I pull out a few bills to hand to my wife
she still grabs the wallet. ;D

 

[ixnay]

Saw this in my local paper this morning; this year marks 50 years since
"The Jetsons" debuted on ABC, and there was a comparison between the
various devices used on the show and those being used now for real. Here's
a list ("Jetsons" first, real world second):

There is a tremendous amount of literary license in those comparisons:

Household help: Robot maid/Roomba - A mechanical vacuum is not a total maid.

Well, it's (slightly enough) close to Rosie. Wonder if that robo-Fran's capabilities (in that Progressive commercial) can be improved upon?

Personal flight: Jet pack/Wingsuit - Neither of these is practical nor in common use.

Who's taking bets on whether or when they will be?

Computers: Wall-sized reel-to-reel tape/Laptop, silicon chip - That was a bank of tape drives on the wall. The actual computer was the size of a refrigerator.

Like a lot of computers back in 1962.

Videophone: Yes, stationary/Skype - I wouldn't call Skype a polished consumer tool just yet.

See my response to "Personal flight" above.

Machine dispensing cooked food: Foodarackacycle/Microwave - An actual Foodarackacycle would have been the Automart, not a microwave. A microwave is only an oven.

I would've loved to gone inside the bowels of an Automat.

Space tourism: Common/A couple of billionaires so far - And likely not in anyone's future living today.

Flying cars: Yes/No. There have been a succession of prototype flying cars since the 1950's but none have reached practicality. If you think you might one day want to commute to work in your personal flying car go first to any local lake and watch the boaters.

I haven't watched The Jetsons in many decades but didn't George actually carry a briefcase when he shot off to work? Why?

Don't know the reason, but the only time I remember seeing the briefcase was towards the end of the opening when George lands at Spacely, disembarks, pushes an exterior button, and the Jetsonmobile folds into briefcase form.

ixnay

 

[landtuna]

I would've loved to gone inside the bowels of an Automat.

They were all history before I moved to NYC and I'm not sure they existed anyplace else. I've heard people talk about going to one for lunch but I don't recall what they thought of the food.

 

[bpatrick]

I've been to New York a couple of times but never saw an
Automat; I do know that Rudy Vallee used to rave about the
food and the coffee there. One person's opinion doesn't really
say if the Automat was any good but I suppose it's encouraging.

Re the computers on "The Jetsons": I don't know if anybody in
1962 (unless it was an elementary-school kid named Bill Gates)
was thinking of computers in terms of laptops. I do know that
George Jetson could push a button on his television and the people
in the picture would seemingly come out of the screen and appear
to actually be in the room. I haven't seen that for real yet. And although
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera never specified the year in which the show took
place, I remember it was assumed to be 2062, 100 years in the future. I
have a feeling that with viewership declining among today's 12-34 age group,
there may not be television in 2062; something (I don't know what) may have
replaced it the way television did network radio. (Given much of what's on today,
I wouldn't miss television if it did go away, but I think radio was good mental
exercise, since the listener created his or her own pictures; I always liked what
Fred Allen used to say: "The college professor could see the show his way, the
truck driver could see the show his way." And they were equally valid.)

 

[landtuna]

Well, it's (slightly enough) close to Rosie. Wonder if that robo-Fran's capabilities (in that Progressive commercial) can be improved upon?

It's Flo-bot. Like the Jack-In-The-Box head I thought the Flo-bot was cool.

 

[ixnay]

Well, it's (slightly enough) close to Rosie. Wonder if that robo-Fran's capabilities (in that Progressive commercial) can be improved upon?

It's Flo-bot. Like the Jack-In-The-Box head I thought the Flo-bot was cool.

That's right, the Progressive gal's name is Flo, not Fran. Somehow I thought her name was Fran.

ixnay

 

[LKellerIII]

The Jetsons is just a cartoon, and they were trying to entertain. I live in San Francisco where on-street parking is almost impossible to find. I want a car that folds up into a briefcase, like George Jetson's - though it doesn't have to fly. ;D

I'm old enough to remember the serious future predictions of the 1960s. I don't think anybody accurately predicted the computer era or the internet. Many such predictions would talk about our houses being run by computers (controlling lights, heat, automatic vacuum cleaning, etc), but it was always a small main-frame that would live in a closet somewhere...kind of like a water heater. I don't recall any predictions about PCs or lap-top computers.

 

[landtuna]

I'm old enough to remember the serious future predictions of the 1960s. I don't think anybody accurately predicted the computer era or the internet. Many such predictions would talk about our houses being run by computers (controlling lights, heat, automatic vacuum cleaning, etc), but it was always a small main-frame that would live in a closet somewhere...kind of like a water heater. I don't recall any predictions about PCs or lap-top computers.

Sometime during my sophomore year of high school (probably during 1959) several IBMers came to my school and did a demo of a "computer". They had a mobile generator roaring away outside the library and a huge cable running in through a window. The computer was a box on wheels that was about as big as a refrigerator and had a teletype for a console. No monitor.

They took about 15 minutes to diagram a problem on a nearby blackboard then solved it manually. Entering the same equation through the console the computer solved it in just seconds. I was very impressed and just 8 years later would enter a tech school that taught both computer operation and programming on the next generation, the IBM 360/30.

Time-sharing computers (IBM 360/67) would come along in the late 60's and networked computers (DEC 10's & 20's and some mini's from other manufacturers) a few years before that.

I don't remember anyone thinking that the size of a computer would be shrunk into a laptop-sized machine or they would become cheap enough to become personal in those days. And who then would have thought a parking spot in San Francisco would out-value a computer of any size back then?

 

[dhett]

About the only precoursor of today's miniaturization would be found in Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist radio. And maybe Maxwell Smart's shoe phone. ;D

 

[anotherguyTN]

The original Star Trek communicators would be a good precursor of cell phones.

Now if they could get the transporter beam to work correctly without it ending up like it did in the Fly movies... :

 

[Tom Wells]

The original Star Trek communicators would be a good precursor of cell phones.

Now if they could get the transporter beam to work correctly without it ending up like it did in the Fly movies... :

Help meeeeee! Help meeeeee!

 

[firepoint525]

There is an interstate interchange near me here with "flyover ramps" that must rise at least 30-40 feet in the air! Whenever I see vehicles on one of these flyover ramps, it reminds me of the Jetsons. Of course, unlike the Jetsons, the cars that I see on the flyover ramps are NOT flying (because the ramps are obviously attached to the ground), but it looks so futuristic that it reminds me of the Jetsons.

 

[trapper12]

The original Star Trek communicators would be a good precursor of cell phones.

Now if they could get the transporter beam to work correctly without it ending up like it did in the Fly movies... :

The injector that Dr. McCoy uses to give the crew shots. I use something very similar for shots I have to take.

 

[anotherguyTN]

There is an interstate interchange near me here with "flyover ramps" that must rise at least 30-40 feet in the air! Whenever I see vehicles on one of these flyover ramps, it reminds me of the Jetsons. Of course, unlike the Jetsons, the cars that I see on the flyover ramps are NOT flying (because the ramps are obviously attached to the ground), but it looks so futuristic that it reminds me of the Jetsons.

I'm guessing you're talking about the ramps at I-40 and Briley Parkway/White Bridge Rd. Some of the ramps for the major interstates in the Dallas/Fort Worth area are amazing. My daughter has said they're like riding a roller coaster.

 

[firepoint525]

There is an interstate interchange near me here with "flyover ramps" that must rise at least 30-40 feet in the air! Whenever I see vehicles on one of these flyover ramps, it reminds me of the Jetsons. Of course, unlike the Jetsons, the cars that I see on the flyover ramps are NOT flying (because the ramps are obviously attached to the ground), but it looks so futuristic that it reminds me of the Jetsons.

I'm guessing you're talking about the ramps at I-40 and Briley Parkway/White Bridge Rd. Some of the ramps for the major interstates in the Dallas/Fort Worth area are amazing. My daughter has said they're like riding a roller coaster.

Yes, and I had the misfortune of living even closer to that area during the construction phase (early to mid-2000s) than I do now. Now I live about 15 miles from there.

The 440/65 interchanges (usually called "the spider" when referred to on TV traffic reports) are also nothing to sneeze at. But I believe that those involve three levels of overpasses, while the 40/Briley/White Bridge monster actually involves FOUR levels of traffic, if you count one of the side streets that passes under the interstate there.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

I would've loved to gone inside the bowels of an Automat.

They were all history before I moved to NYC and I'm not sure they existed anyplace else. I've heard people talk about going to one for lunch but I don't recall what they thought of the food.

I enjoyed "dining" with a friend at a NYC automat in the late '60s, shortly before their demise. I thought the food was pretty tasty, especially the couconut cream pie I had for dessert.

 

[Tom Wells]

I would've loved to gone inside the bowels of an Automat.

They were all history before I moved to NYC and I'm not sure they existed anyplace else. I've heard people talk about going to one for lunch but I don't recall what they thought of the food.

I enjoyed "dining" with a friend at a NYC automat in the late '60s, shortly before their demise. I thought the food was pretty tasty, especially the couconut cream pie I had for dessert.

Only once in the mid-60's did I go to an automat, at Union Station in Chicago.
We had gone to pick up Grandma from the train, and had some time to pass.
There were full meal plates with 3-4 items, and most of the same items seperately.
It was pretty amazing. The whole section of wall was stainless steel doors of several sizes.
Seems like you could see past the food back into the kitchen.
I don't remember anything about the beverage arrangements, but there must have been
a truncated soda fountain rather than machines.

And as soon as somebody took an item out, it got replaced fast.
The room could have seated maybe 100 people.
There were also barber shops, hat stores, tobacco shops, a drugstore, etc.
Don't know when it closed, but that part of the station ( the headhouse ) was leveled and replaced with
a steel-and-glass 1970's office building.
The trains are still underneath, there's just no "micro-city" concourse building anymore.
What is left for train station customers is a rather perfunctory waiting area.

 

[cd637299]

I think it was amazing, considering the finite minds of Hanna-Barbera's writers, how close they really were to life in the future.

cd