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October 1962 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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 2012 came and went more than a decade
ago. The date was 50 years in the future back in 1962 when Radio-Electronics
magazine editor Hugo Gernsback asked industry leaders to cogitate on
possibilities of the state of electronics in 2012. Let's see how they did. One
guy predicted our communications would be in the 100 THz to 1,500 THz band,
using 2 decimeter antennas. Nope. Another believed we would be communicating
with aliens on a regular basis. In a way he was right; they now populate our
cities and consume massive resources. Oops, wrong kind of alien. A military dude
partly hit the mark by predicting 2- and 3-year-olds would be sitting in front
of "televideo screens" (cellphones) learning
Esperanto and "other basic
studies." Bell Labs believed most audiovisual material, along with commerce,
would be done electronically; i.e., the World Wide Web. I'm not quite sure
how to interpret the IT&T guy's prediction of replacing microwave space
transmission with light wavelength waveguide transmission. Seems bassackward to
me. There are others.
Electronics in 2012 AD
... The Flower of Electronic Engineers Forecast the Future ...
When the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) celebrated its 50th anniversary last
spring, the editor of the Proceedings of the IRE asked IRE Fellows to let their
imaginations roam 50 years hence, to the year 2012. There was a wide response, which
was recorded in the 50th anniversary issue. The following are excerpts from the
prognostications of a number of internationally famous electronic engineers: - Hugo Gernsback
Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, president, Graduate Research Center of
the Southwest, Dallas, Tex.: ... The basic communication and navigation system utilizes
coherent radiation in the wavelength ranges of 1,800 to 30,000 angstroms which lend
themselves to formation of highly focused beams with very lightweight and miniature
radiating systems. ... Our main transmitter with an antenna of 2 decimeters diameter
can focus the entire radiation of 1-watt peak power on an area 500 meters in diameter
on earth. ... You will take part in construction of the new Jovian system designed
to provide communication, navigation and control, for the expedition to land on
the minor satellite of Jupiter next year. ... Travel arrangements between earth
and moon ... are entirely controlled by automatic data systems using the high-speed
real-time computer of the type that I hold here in my hand .... Your travel time
to the moon was 36 hours ...
Dr. J. H. Dellinger, retired physicist and radio engineer, former
president of the IRE: ... Probably intelligent beings on the planets of many stars
are sending out signals with the idea of contacting life on other worlds. ... If
we probe the entire spectrum, we might learn something on the moon that we could
not do on earth ...
Dr. Frederick E. Terman, vice president and provost of Stanford
University, Stanford, Calif.: ... The basic training for the electronic scientist
of 2012 will be a 4-year course, as it is today. The amount of knowledge will, however,
be increased by a factor of at least 50% through programmed learning systems growing
out of today's teaching machines. ... The overall result will be that in 2012 the
typical recipient of a Bachelor's degree will have covered material that would today
require at least 3 postgraduate years of solid course work ...
Dr. Harold A. Zahl, director of research, US Army Signal Research
and Development Laboratory, Fort Monmouth, N. J.: ... even children disliked education
in the 1960's. A person of that era would be amazed to see our 2- and 3-year-olds
sitting in front of their televideo screens learning the International Language
and other basic studies.
Dorman D. Israel, executive vice president, Emerson Radio &
Phonograph Corp., Jersey City, N. J.: ... in 2012 ... newborn infants can be operated
upon and the latest submicroelectronic equipment installed in the brain and at certain
critical points in the spinal column so that they are almost certainly assured not
only of the benefits of full nonradio communicative powers but also there is reason
to believe that their scientific creative ability will be enhanced. ...
Dr. W. D. Lewis, executive director of Research Communications
System Div., Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., Murray Hill, N. J.: ... it seems
likely that most written communication will be transmitted electrically .... The
private citizen will have electrical access to machines of all kinds, for example,
access to reference libraries and centralized data-processing units for banking.
... It is possible that a combination of visual recording, teaching machine techniques
and human intervention will make available the best education in any subject, to
anyone who wants it ...
Dr. Henri Busignies, vice president and general technical director,
International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., New York, N. Y.: ... On the very
dense transmission links for relatively short distances (up to a few thousand miles)
on land, waveguide transmission will replace microwave space transmission and will
give a bandwidth capacity that will make available thousands of television channels;
this will permit transmission of masses of data, of newspapers and printed material
and will make available phone vision to a large section of the subscribers at a
reasonable cost. The carrier used in the waveguide will be a coherent beam of light.
... Newspapers (or rather their equivalents) will be made locally automatically
from a liquid ...
Dr. Peter C. Goldmark, president of CBS Laboratories, Stamford,
Conn.: ... Anyone in 1962 with some imagination should have been able to predict
our moon-to-earth citizens radio service, operating so effectively in the millimeter
citizens band, but it would not have been easy to foresee our tremendously efficient
high-power solid-state wristwatch transceivers and plasma antennas. ... TV cameras
of today (2012 AD), our 1-inch-diameter, 2-inch-long solid-state camera units, combining
the multi color-sensitive, scanning and amplifying elements in a number of evaporated
layers, are far ahead of what (was) predicted ...
Dr. Yasujiro Niwa, president, Tokyo Electrical Engineering College,
Chiyodaku, Tokyo, Japan: ... Again, the advancement of electronics decisively solved
this problem: today principal languages of the world can be translated instantly
by the aid of electronics. Our telegrams are simultaneously translated into, and
typewritten by, the language of the receiver, and on our overseas telephone the
speech is also converted to the language understood by the receiver and vice versa.
Moreover, by hyper-miniaturization of electronic parts and appliances, the size
of the translating machine is also reduced to such an extent that it can be easily
used at home and carried by hand ...
Benjamin B. Bauer, vice president, acoustics and magnetics,
CBS Laboratories, Stamford, Conn.: ... Devices for converting sounds to nerve impulses
for direct connection to the brain will have been developed; however, they will
require a delicate implanting operation and will not be in general use. These "artificial
cochleae" will largely replace deaf-aid devices as we know them today in cases of
inner ear damage. For mild hearing loss, greatly refined electronic aids will be
implanted in the ear canal, or the middle ear, and provide a lifetime of operation
with harmless atomic cells ...
George D. Watkins: (member IRE) ... It may be possible to isolate,
develop and breed strains of living cells which perform simple logic functions.
The role of the new bio-electronic engineer would then be to synthesize (grow) from
these basic units larger organisms which could perform extremely complex operations.
... Some of the desirable features of the living cell circuit would be the self-healing
aspect, the extreme miniaturization, and efficiency. The unique power supply required
(nutrient) would also offer some possible advantages ... A living cell circuit might
be planted in the body and live off its nutrients with no additional power supply
requirement.
Dr. V. K. Zworykin, honorary vice president, Radio Corporation
of America, RCA Laboratories, Princeton, N. J.: ... [As] Mr. Jones reports for his
annual health checkup [he] inserts his coded Social Security card into a slot for
identification of the examination record. A series of standardized questions concerning
his physical condition are then flashed on a screen in front of him and he records
his answers by means of yes - no pushbuttons. Weight, temperature, respiration rate,
electrocardiogram, reflexes and other data are registered directly. Blood, breath
and urine specimens are inserted into analytical machines, which add corpuscle counts
and chemical data to the record. ... The examination record is transmitted in coded
form to the regional electronic health record storage center, where it comes to
form part of Mr. Jones' permanent health record ...
Marvin Camras, senior engineer, Armour Research Foundation,
Technology Center, Chicago, Ill.: ... Money is no longer a medium of exchange. All
purchases are now charged directly to one's bank account whenever one presents his
magnetic credit card. At the same time the latest balance and a record of what has
been purchased is placed on the card for one's personal record. Wages and earnings
are also credited continuously ...
Dr. Simon Ramo, vice chairman of the board, Thompson Ramo Wooldridge,
Inc., Los Angeles, Calif.: ... Every practicing attorney might have in his office
a convenient electronic connection to a huge national central repository of all
of the facts, rules, procedures and precedents that he needs. The system will scan,
select, reject and present the equivalent results of thousands of trained [law]
searchers covering decades of records over the entire nation in a split second ...
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