Modern Mechanix Round-UP

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at the ridiculously impractical idea of Rocket Mail. When you absolutely have to get a document from New York to San Francisco in 2 hours, send it via ballistic missile! Or you could use a phone or fax for about one millionth the cost. This 1968 Life magazine piece titled “Scientology: A growing cult reaches dangerously into the mind” chronicles the author’s (rather unhappy) experience with the organization. We also looked at a scheme to prevent birds from nesting in reservoirs that looks like it’s computer generated, a selection of advertisements for “steam carriages” from a 1902 issue of Scientific American, the grandfather of the Ionic Breeze which looks like it would make a wicked bong, and an early camera that was capable of taking 60,000 pictures a second.

1. [dculberson]

   Good point – Rocket mail is an example of something preemptively obsoleted (obsolesced?) by unexpected tech… pretty cool really!

2. [richard schumacher]

   In a couple years thrillseekers will be paying $200,000 a head to take quite similar joyrides. Transcontinental and transoceanic business trips will follow soon after.