I was recently reading through the 50th anniversary issue of Newsweek, published in the spring of 1983, that I found in my dad’s library.
The articles spanned the events during the half century predating the issue, and are both educating and entertaining.
Posting scans of automotive ads alone would be fun, but for now I’m focusing on an ad by Bell System, the US telephone company that broke apart a year later.
In this two page ad, a giant telephone is looming above a fiery horizon on the left, indicating the upcoming future. The ad is titled, “Your gateway to tomorrow.”
The right page contains three columns of text, that are accurately predicting today’s interconnected world in hair-raising detail. Telecommunications has changed the way the world lives, works and functions, forever.
Whoever wrote the copy produced a chillingly accurate depiction of the future, through good old-fashioned advertising, and one would wonder how much of it was discounted as merely ad mambo-jumbo, 32 years ago.
I hope you find it as thrilling as I did.
Your simple, basic, everyday telephone is about to become much more.
Because your local Bell telephone company is becoming your gateway to the Information Age.
It will open the door to dramatic and exciting changes in the way we work. And live and play. Changes that have already begun as our children learn about computers more easily than we learned long division.Some of these changes already are here. Others are just around the corner.
Right now, for instance, some people are participating in experiments that let them dial up news, weather and other information on their home video screens. They can shop from department store catalogs. Check stock market prices. They can compare supermarket specials. Pay their bills. Even do their banking.The day isn’t far off when you’ll be able to call your oven from your office and tell’it to start dinner. Or tell your air conditioner to turn on. Local utilities will use telephone lines to take remote readings of your gas and electric meters so you won’t have to be home to let the meter reader in.
And if you don’t like what’s on television, you may be able to dial up whatever movie you want to see and have it appear on your television screen exactly when you want it.
When you’re away from home, you may be able to have your calls reach you wherever you are- simply by dialing a special set of numbers and programming your day.
Your calls could automatically follow you to your client’s office, the gym, your neighbor’s house. Wherever you’re going.If you’re stranded in your car anywhere in the country, you may be able to call a single national automobile club telephone number and automatically be connected to the nearest open service station. These changes and many more will be as close as your telephone. Your gateway to tomorrow.
To bring you these changes, your local telephone company and other Bell System units also are changing.
We want you to understand what’s going on. What it all means to you.So we’ll be talking to you in ads like this. Inviting you to get in touch with us through our “Let’s Talk” program.
Call us at 1 800 555-5000.Let’s talk about what’s happening today to make a new tomorrow.
Or let’s talk about tomorrow. Because it’s almost here. Let’s talk.
When I was doing research for my book, I ran across a 1969 article about some inventors at Bell Lab who were working on a system to send electronic packets through a new kind of line called “fiber optics.”
It’s really cool to read about these futurists who were so on the money about the future.
Some engineer has to see it coming in order to make it, I suppose.
Great find!
Jen – That’s really cool and shows how we take for granted many technologies that exist in daily life today.
Joseph – Thanks, I didn’t have to type it all in, OCR is amazingly accurate these days 😀 Maybe I should post some car and cigarette ads from that issue next!