JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I've made several entries to this blog on the history of the pre-history of the Internet of Stuff and Things, inventions and contrivances that were in their sometimes-quirky ways a taste of the stuff of what was to be...or if you applied some imagination to it, that is what they could seem to be. (Of the things that could be, there are those things that might be, and can be, and of course those that shouldn't be--but that's another story.) In this image, taken from the front page of the magazine Popular Mechanics for March 1916 we see something from the future, though as is usually the case the implemented future-vision that actually takes place is far more elegant than what the imagined-future suggested. In this instance we see someone sampling clothing and seeing their reflection wearing that clothing though not actually trying any of it on--this is commonplace now, but back in 1916 it wasn't, and mostly didn't even exist. Of course you'd still have to go to a clothier to use this device, which means that all of the effort in trying on new clothing would be present except for the final part of actually trying the clothing on. And given the encumbrances of the technology, the whole thing sounds as though it would take more time to use than the time it was supposed to save. Anyway the device was interesting, though there are probably failing marks for the temporal economics of the thing.
Comments