Ad: Honeywell’s Electronic Mail

1. [tw15]

   So what would the ad be like if it was promoting Twitter, I wonder?

2. [monstrinho_do_biscoito]

   lovely

   a better description at the side might have been “it’s like a telegraph on your television”

3. [redsquares]

   I was hit by an email once, not a good feeling.

4. [Anonymous]

   I’m scared!

5. [Anonymous]

   Does anyone know when the advertisement was published?

6. [Cefeida]

   I just printed that ad out. I feel a little dizzy.

7. [Pam Rosengren]

   @ wigeru – love it, tweeted it for all my friends to see.

   @ bender, cefeida – it could have been done any of those ways. I would vote for a double exposure (or possibly, like Man Ray sometimes did, two negatives in the enlarger). Having said that, in the city I grew up in there was a very highly paid woman artist (imported from the USA) who painted onto negatives to retouch them. She could even do that in colour.

   Now, of course, it is just a matter of getting the blending mode right.

8. [artbot]

   Many CEOs still see email like this.

9. [Brainspore]

   @ Bender #23:

   I would be surprised if they didn’t just composite two shots together in the darkroom rather than just use the “long exposure and strobe” method to get this particular shot.

   Don’t forget that most of the tools in the Photoshop palette are modeled after some real-world counterpart from the pre-digital age. Adobe didn’t invent photo manipulation, they just made it a hell of a lot easier.

10. [Bender]

    What I thought of when I saw this was this was made in the fun ol’ days for a commercial photographer – before photoshop. I’m sure this was shot on one piece of large format (4×5 or 8x 10 film), an assistant off to the side with a sparkler, swoop in to “paint” the streak, right after the strobes go off to light the guy and his wired up tie.

    You’d shoot 10 or 15 sheets of film, then wait for it to be developed to see if you got anything good. Some real adventures.

11. [Cefeida]

    @ Bender, your description makes me want to try and replicate this. Maybe it could just be double exposure on the print, too? Or maybe the comet tail wasn’t even in the photo, they might have painted it in later…

    I wonder.

12. [GeekMan]

    @Artbot: Lawyers too. We still regularly receive faxes of printed Word files. They print out the electronic file and fax it to us.

13. [NicoNicoNico]

    It’s magic!

14. [GeekMan]

    @ ARTBOT #7: No. Some younger members of the same firm use e-mail. Others just prefer faxes and you can’t convince them to change.

15. [Anonymous]

    You guys are on fire today.

16. [burningcanoe]

    Was that the Honeywell in Scarborough? If so I was probably riding my bike there as well

17. [Galoot]

    An error occurred while sending mail.

    The mail server responded: #5.1.0 Address [Mr. Laurie Reeves(AT)Honeywell Office Automation Systems, Three Newton Executive Park Drive, Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts 02162] rejected.

    Please check the message recipient(s) and try again.

18. [Middlerun]

    That’s pretty cool. I’ve only ever seen the non-bowdlerised version.

    http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/23/electronicmail.jpg

19. [Capissen]

    That is totally my desk!

20. [dculberson]

    An ema1l once bit my sister.

21. [Halloween Jack]

    That was only one of many futuristic wonders that Grandpa was to discover that day; later that afternoon, this incredible “electronic mail” medium would help him to make a new Nigerian friend placed highly in the old administration, as well as giving him instructions for larger and firmer erections.

22. [artbot]

    #2 – Isn’t that just lawyers covering their asses? Something about faxes being more accountable for having been received than email.

23. [chryss]

    I’m finding this ad with a 1977 and a 1981 date. Does anyone know what year it is from exactly?

24. [Bender]

    #20 CEFEIDA- Really isn’t hard to replicate this kind of thing, and it can be lot of fun. In a really dark room, or outside at night, put a dslr camera on a tripod, trip the shutter on the B setting (so the lens stays open as long as the shutter release is being pressed ) the flash should go off (or if it doesn’t, do it manually ), then afterwards (while in darkness), someone come in and paint whatever with the sparkler or flashlight.

    Fun stuff.

    In the times when this shot was made, I have little doubt that this was one exposure. But who knows, I’ve been wrong before.

25. [Raines Cohen]

    I fondly remember biking to that Newton Lower Falls address (since it was West of the Charles River, we tended to think of it as Wellesley) near the fabled technocentric little-Silicon-Valley Route 128 (actually, a separate training room just up the hill on Cedar Street) for my Explorer Post evening meetings in High School… learning the valuable career skill: timesharing with COBOL. Of greater significance was discovering that it was on the route of an aqueduct, part of a wonderful network of hidden bike routes to explore that got me engrossed in Geography at a tender age.

    Note that the zip code has changed; it is now 02462.

    Also worth noting that from the site, Walnut Street becomes Cedar which becomes… Hunnewell.

26. [DanC]

    So according to the picture, Electronic Mail is actually ELECTRONIC MAIL!
    Awesome.
    Also, I’m not sure how to interpret that guy’s facial expression, whether ecstasy or terror, but I’m sure it means he now needs to change his pants.

27. [Raines Cohen]

    re the ad itself, the most provocative/ironic element to me, in my studies of unintended consequences, is this line: “Administrative personnel are more effective.” Would that be effectively out of work, or overworked?

28. [wigeru]

    The first thing I thought of when I saw this ad was the Internet Filtering legislation currently on the table in Australia.

    So…

    http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww215/wiggett/Electronic-Mail.jpg

29. [Anonymous]

    The dawn of time is funny, but when did this ad actually appear?

30. [Dillenger69]

    Love the ashtray.

31. [Anonymous]

    “Administrative personnel are more effective” aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha. Get the hell outta town. If anything, electronic mail has totally RUINED administrative personnel.

32. [Anonymous]

    “from the dawn of time”? Really? This ad could have easily run n the 80s, not what I’d call the dawn of time.

33. [mattyism]

    @ WIGERU: That is hilarious! as a fellow Australian, i dig your style

34. [apoxia]

    This reminds me of a hilarious car ad from a readers digest. It has a man with a massively swelled head and the text reads something about how you would need a 40 MB brain to understand all the tasks this car can perform. The point being of course that 40 MBs is such an unimaginably huge number your head would have to be swelled to accommodate a brain that big. I believe the ad is from the late 80s early 90s and I suppose at the time 40 MBs was a lot, I remember my family’s first home computer in the late 80s/early 90s had a 20 MB hard drive. Unfortunately the ad makes a mockery both of computers and of the amazingness that is the human brain. I should really look for that ad again, I’ve never found it on a google search.

35. [dsrg]

    I love that this electronic mail-thingy promises that the mountains of paperwork will go away, and that decision-making will be easier. Will that be available anytime soon?

36. [Anonymous]

    Replace the term “electronic mail” with “twitter” and you have renewed it for 2009.

    (oh and the answer is twitter is blogging for the incredibly lazy and uncreative)

37. [salsaman]

    @11– right on, great ash tray, also loving the wilted plant on the book shelf!

    So, what was the publication date of this, and what publication?