David K. Israel
10 Futuristic Ads From the Past
by David K. Israel - January 12, 2010 - 9:29 AM

There’s nothing quite like old advertisements to give us a look-see at what the past thought the future would look like, taste like, talk like or sound like. Ads also act as a wonderful time capsule when it comes to fashion and technology. Here are 10 that either focus on predicting the future, or, alternately, remind us just how far we’ve come from the not-so-distant past. Most were culled from this wonderful site: vintageadbrowser.com.

1. Bell Telephone, 1953

telephone

[In case you can't read the copy, it says: It's hard to say, young fellow, but you can be sure there are great things ahead. Today we telephone from moving automobiles, trains, airplanes and ships far out at sea. And radio microwaves beam telephone calls and television programs from tower to tower across the country. The day is coming when you'll be able to reach any telephone in the country simply by dialing a number. Perhaps some day in the future you may just speak the number into the transmitter and get your party automatically.] Vlingo, anyone, anyone?

2. National, 1960s

nationalaccounting

3. 1944

3685525648_e0d6384267_b

4. Philco, 1938

radio of future

5. Burlington Route’s Zephyrs and steam trains, 1944

T2866-lrg

6. Western Air Lines, 1943

T2267-lrg

7. Admiral Radio, 1942

R0059-lrg

8. Cannon Electric Development Company, 1944

R0813-lrg

9. IBM, 1955

ibm

10. Extensys Corporation, 1977

memory

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Comments (24)

  1. If you took the Cable Quiz one of the choices that came up frequently was XLR – they are also known as Cannon connectors and that’s an early version of one at the bottom of #8.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 1-12-2010 at 10:36 am

  2. I love that learning to play the piano is “Youth’s greatest burden”.

    posted by Julie on 1-12-2010 at 10:39 am

  3. “womankind gratefully turns task after task over to electricity” Good for you ladies!

    posted by nathan on 1-12-2010 at 10:42 am

  4. Look how much text these ads have. Compare that to the amount of text in today’s ads. That should tell you something. (Hint: It tells you that we’re stupid today.)

    posted by Bob on 1-12-2010 at 11:00 am

  5. If only “youths greatest burden” WAS learning to play the piano.

    I love the electricity ad because my mom grew up on a farm in Iowa and then on a farm in Wisconsin and I don’t know when they got electricity… I know they didn’t have a TV until after she graduated high school in 1962. I don’t think they had a phone either. I’m pretty sure they had a radio though.

    I think I read somewhere that something like less than half the population had electricity when that ad came out in 1944.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 1-12-2010 at 11:11 am

  6. @Bob – even the choice of the words used then versus now make us seem stupid. #3 refers to the “indelible lines of toil and fatigue” when today we’d just see “wrinkles.”

    posted by ab on 1-12-2010 at 11:29 am

  7. 64k for only $1500? I’ll get my checkbook!

    I do like the “no squat, no stoop, no squint.” Hooray for ergonomics!

    posted by Cora on 1-12-2010 at 11:32 am

  8. Is there any reason why the numbering is off (1, 1, 3…..)?

    posted by Ian from Baltimore on 1-12-2010 at 11:36 am

  9. @Ian – my only excuse is that I wrote it at 5am with a crying, sick todler on my lap. Okay, that last part isn’t true. But it was 5am… ;-) good catch

    posted by David K. Israel on 1-12-2010 at 11:39 am

  10. The Library of Congress Web site has a section devoted to old newspapers called Chronicling America. I love to look through them for the old ads. They’re fantastic! One of my favorites was for a diet pill to make skinny girls put on more weight. But it uses the exact same spin we use today for the opposite. The C.A site is linked to my name if you’re interested!

    recaptcha: inhales moscow

    posted by Hastings on 1-12-2010 at 11:46 am

  11. I just wanna know what happened to the family helicopter. According to the ad, it would cost no more than a family car.

    posted by Tim T. on 1-12-2010 at 12:21 pm

  12. @Bob – Not necessarily. It tells me the marketers/advertisers of the day thought a long, detailed sales pitch was the way to go. There’s probably less text in today’s ads because they sell better.

    Besides, if it does mean we’re stupid today then our stupid had to come from somewhere. My vote: relatives who sat around and read the entire text of magazine ads.

    posted by Nate on 1-12-2010 at 12:33 pm

  13. I want to know what happened to my family helicopter too. I don’t care about your cool new cell phone, video conferencing or how many petaflops the newest supercomputer clocks, until we have flying cars it is NOT the future.

    posted by 303mike on 1-12-2010 at 12:44 pm

  14. @Bob, @Nate – I wonder if the limited wording in today’s ads has to do more with the “A.D.D.” of today’s population (slight tongue in cheek) or even the the increase of mediums for advertising (such as tv, radio, internet, cell phones, telemarketers, etc) versus a century or even a half century ago when we weren’t such a global society with such a reaction/devotion to brand names. (brand names, to me, meaning (loose example) McDonalds doesn’t need three columns to explain why they’re a great lunch option, we know why /convenience, reputation,etc/)

    posted by OkieMelissa on 1-12-2010 at 1:47 pm

  15. Today, we face information overload. We can view so many ads in a day. Back in the day, having new things to read was somewhat of a luxury, no?

    I spend hours a day as it is reading all kinds of things without even going anywhere. *Anybody* can publish something. It’s all at my fingertips. Unless an ad is really, really interesting, I’m probably not going to read through a lot of text.

    posted by Cecelia on 1-12-2010 at 3:23 pm

  16. Julie, I had the same thought. Times must have been pretty good when “youth’s greatest burden” is learning to play the piano. That, or society was incredibly disillusioned.

    posted by jane on 1-12-2010 at 3:34 pm

  17. Forget the flying car, where’s my radio that’s twice the size of a drafting table?

    posted by Karen In Japan on 1-13-2010 at 12:51 am

  18. I love old ads. Sometimes they guess correctly, sometimes they’re just so kooky you have to laugh.

    You can visit the Pioneer Zephyr in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It’s quite a beautiful looking train in person. (link in my name)

    posted by nihil on 1-13-2010 at 9:50 am

  19. Damn, @Bob is getting wordy. ; )

    posted by Jim on 1-13-2010 at 11:53 am

  20. Nice article I bet the reason there is less words on today’s ads because the charges per letter went up.

    posted by Kari on 1-13-2010 at 12:50 pm

  21. @Bob et al:

    One thing to take into account with vintage vs. modern ads is the globalization of brands. You can pay a copywriter to do three paragraphs on an item, then a dozen translators to get it into all the languages necessary for your global brand positioning.(And risk faulty translations like the famous KFC “Eat your fingers off” gaff.) OR you can pay that same copywriter once for a visual solve ad that can play across the world. If you read advertising award annuals now, there’s only a few words on the ad, but there are 40 countries represented in the awards.

    Whether or not that’s progress is a personal call.

    posted by Terri on 1-13-2010 at 1:08 pm

  22. Don’t forget that the magazines back then weren’t competing with TV and other instant media for people’s attention. Folks had more time to read – or more accurately, they took more time to read.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 1-13-2010 at 1:44 pm

  23. I SOOOOO want my family helicopter. Who do I call?

    posted by Fran on 1-13-2010 at 2:59 pm

  24. Well, one of them came true. The Cannon plug is still ubiquitous in aviation.

    posted by Pants on 1-15-2010 at 10:43 pm

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