Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at this entertaining, though wildly optimistic vision of a future where lazy Americans are coddled by robot slaves that do everything from parting their hair and catching rats around the house to melting snow by spraying cheap “atomic heat”, whatever that means. This 1936 article titled “The World’s Most Dangerous Job” documents what filmmakers had to go through to get movies of tigers in their native habitat. We also looked at a talking scare crow, a slide projector that is for some reason shaped like a pistol, an automatic trap-door for automobile roofs designed to prevent bashing one’s head and a curt, stylish ad for Camel cigarettes.

1. [Mikey Likes BoingBoing]

   That graphic is VERY creepy.

2. [Daniel Rutter]

   While it’s fun to think of “atomic heat” as coming from a slab of white-hot plutonium mounted inside the robot, I think you’ll find that what the Mechanix Illustrated writer actually meant was heat from an electrical element, which was to be POWERED by the too-cheap-to-meter atomic plants that they envisaged sprouting all over the States.

   Since this was the January 1957 issue of MI and they were promising valet robots and jet cars by 1965, though, I think this may set some kind of new record for how soon some ridiculous techno-prediction was supposed to come about.

   (Then again, “singularity” fans now seem to be trying for that record every day.)