The above film titled The Electronic Coach was produced in 1959 by IBM to show off their IBM 650. My favorite part of the film is when the coach pulls out reams of paper in the middle of the game to figure out who to send out next on to the basketball court. Although while the technology looks awkward it’s important to keep in mind that the IBM 650 was one of the first mass computers ever made with over 2,000 shipping between 1954 and 1962. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 1, 2010 in Pulp Fiction
This wonderful illustration is from a 1959 ad in Newsweek magazine for America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies. The headline for the ad is Your Personal “Flying Carpet” and the copy that follows sounds quite silly until you get to the last line which reminds me a great deal of the internet today: Read more…
50 years ago in April of 1959 the then new American space agency NASA started Project Mercury — the goal of which was to have manned spaceflight. In 1962 Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. would make the first American sub-orbital trip — and later in 1962 John Glenn (shown in the video above) would make the first orbit: Read more…
