This is kind of amazing...

It's a film from the reasearch labs of the British Post Office, which before privatisation also controlled all telecommunications in the country.

The sound is a bit duff in places and I can't understand what's being said at times, but it's mind-blowing all the same.

Wow, that was fantastic

not one mention of youtube

pish

very interesting stuff

It's just bizarre that they talk about wideband (broadband) delivery through PCM modulation, via optic cable. There's also an inkling of webcams, downloading files and choosing hyperlinks.

Stuff like this makes you realise that the future is always waiting to happen.

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[Edited 2/27/10 18:19pm]

My friend Travis sent me a scan of this article. It's a snippet of an article from an August 1968 write up in National Geographic. I don't know what the whole article was about (he only scanned this one page), but there were some very interesting notions back in the summer of 1968 about what computers will do for us. I was born in 1968, and it's amazing how almost all that future technology is sitting square in our laps today, cheap, and sometimes free.

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Computers May Do Household Chores

When these supercircuits and "computers on a slice" come out of a laboratory some years hence, the stuff of dreams will become reality. The computer, adaptable to an infinite number of tasks, will become remarkably cheap by today's standards. According to predictions given me by industry leaders....here's what it will do for you:

In your car a computer no bigger than a teacup will control your ignition system and all the instruments on your dash. More important, it will continuously monitor radar signals that measure the distance to the next car. If the distance becomes too small or the rate of approach becomes too great for safety, an alarm will sound.

In your home, a rented terminal liked to a master computer will virtually run your household. It will control the environment -- heating, cooling, humidity. It will control all your appliances, and radio, hi-fi, and television sets. If you are delayed on a shopping trip, you will be able to phone in and direct the computer to turn on the stove and start dinner. It will figure your income tax and at any moment tell you your balance at the bank.

If you wish, you will even be able to have books in your city library reproduced on a screen in your home, page by page. The books, of course, will have been recorded on magnetic tape at the library. And your newspaper may one day roll out of a machine in your home, printing news fed into the computer, for a free, at the newspaper office.

At the department store, the clerk will take your personal identification card, put it into a slot connected by computer to local banks, and the amount of the purchase will be transferred from your balance to the store's account. If your balance won't cover the purchase, the computer will say so. Checks will become obsolete for most purposes.

All this can become possible through large-scale integration.

GirlBrother said:

The acting is on par if not slightly better than the last 3 star wars movies.




I find it fascinating which aspects they got right and which ones they got wrong. I also find it fascinating that we surpassed much of that technology by the 90s. Normally I think of an Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov world in which we are somehow far, far, behind on.

TheVoid said:

I love the stomping sound efects when the secretary walks downstairs.

TheVoid said:

I just find it mind-blowing just how much technology was already here, by the 1930s. Telephones... Telex machines... Punch-card computing... Television... Radio... Magnetic sound recording... Radar & sonar...

Nikola Tesla was a genius:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...kola_Tesla

Einstein... Logie-Baird... Edison...

I don't think that technology is properly taught in schools. Kids should be educated about this stuff at elementary school.

I wonder if the two World Wars accelerated or hindered technology?

GirlBrother said:

The WWII increased much of our knowledge by leaps and bounds.
But the scientist who developed much of these war-time technologies are
in complete debt to Alber Einstein from his 1905 and 1912 theories.

Einstein made his discovery of 'special relativity',
which by itself would have gauranteed his position as
one of the great minds of the last century.
In it he came up with the formula E=MC^2 in which energy is equal to
mass times the speed of light (squared). This means a truly truly
staggeringly, unimaginably ENORMOUS amount of energy is stored inside
any object that has mass. The typical human being has enough energy
in his body to set off an explosion greater than 150,000 Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs.
All that was left was for physicist to figure out how to 'released'
the energy, which of course they did to devastating effect 30-40 years
later.

Einstein's 1912 discovery of the theory of 'General Relativity' though
is what's almost certainly guaranteed his place in history forever,
and certain is probably the greatest intellectual achievement of mandkind
to date. I'm reading a book in which scientist stated that the special
theory of relativity was a triumph, but it was also a theory waiting to
be discovered. However, the general theory of relativity would
likely still be waiting to be discovered if not for Einstein.

In it of course Einstein proves that space, time, and matter are interwoven
into a single fabric. Again, many years later scientist were able to
design systems such as the Global GPS systems we enjoy today in our Tom Toms
and IPhones, etc. (The satellites which are wizzing through space at 20,000
miles per hour are all calibrated to compensate for relative space-time because
being just a 'second' off in time would result in wrong turns for vehicles
relying on these GPS systems.


But at any rate, I need to find books on technological advancements based
on war-time policies or projects. I'm sure they're are tons of them that
I'm just ignorant of. I'm on an Einstein kick lately.





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[Edited 2/28/10 3:19am]

Cool video! I tried to win a contest to guess what major world changing invention turned 40 that day. The answer was the internet. But I could not get a line.