by Unknown
(8 April 1965)
Back in 1967 New Scientist had a rather outdated attitude to gender roles.
Shopping in disguise
The all-purpose credit card usable in stores, hotels and so on has been a feature of the American scene for some time and grows in popularity in Britain. In the United States, however, they intend to go one better. The customer at, say, a supermarket will have to pop the credit card into an electronic device which will signal a computer centre to check on his or her bank account. Not so far out, you think? Well it gets better. The computer will also give the salesgirl a visual description of the holder of the card: colour of hair and eyes, height and weight, and so on.
If the description tallies, the customer gets the goods. However, I foresee problems. Most shopping is still done by women—so how will the computer know that this season Madam is sporting a blonde wig or a blue rinse, or wearing skyscraper heels, or weight-disguising falsies, or has changed the colour of her eyes with contact lenses?
(21 December 1967)
In the tube
The idea of ‘test-tube babies’ is no longer something to be woven into the plot of a science fiction novel. Serious-minded scientists are not only thinking about cultivating human embryos on the laboratory bench—they are developing the techniques which will make this a practical possibility. In the current issue of The Lancet Dr R. G. Edwards, now at the Physiological Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, describes work done there and at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, US. Dr Edwards has taken eggs from ovaries, or parts of ovaries, obtained from 16 women who for one reason or another had to have these organs removed.
(11 November 1965)
And, just as interestingly, the battles of yesteryear are still being fought out today. Here we offer a cynical take on what was at the time—and arguably still is—the most sensitive area of scientific research…
Bad breeding
The Vatican’s official press spokesman yesterday denounced as ‘immoral acts and absolutely illicit’ experiments in Britain in fertilising human eggs outside the body.
Does the current turmoil over test-tube babies, which has spilled across so many acres of newsprint, and occupied so many broadcasting hours, mean that the public has at last begun to take science seriously? Almost certainly not. What has happened is that editors have realised that apparent ‘breakthroughs’ in medicine hold a fascination for the reading, listening and viewing masses which at least equals that exerted by tales of sex murders, and other titillating aberrations of human behaviour.
(20 February 1969)
But enough conceit about our successful visions of the future. What about when we got it all very wrong?
TV hell
Telephone, radio, and television systems are capable of conveying information at a far greater rate than men and women can cope with it. This is shown by some recent measurements involving an application of ‘information theory’ to human beings. ‘Information’ in this technical sense includes all the entertainment and small change of ordinary conversation.
(23 May 1957)
No chance
What is the future for colour television? This is one of the questions which must perplex the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, and which—for that matter—must keep Mr Bevins, the Postmaster-General, tossing uneasily in his sleep. For as the days get shorter and as those persons known as ‘viewers’ begin to recognise that the content of their patch of fluorescent flicker is much the same as it was a year ago, the clamour for colour television must inevitably increase. Already some papers have called Mr Bevins ‘colour-blind’. It will be surprising if he is not much more colourfully described before the winter is over. The cry will be for a nationwide broadcasting service supplying a coloured television picture to virtually every house in the country.
This should be allowed to echo unheeded in the ether. For it seems that nobody has so far been able to demonstrate that a colour television service will benefit anybody but the television maintenance men.
(16 November 1961)
We were still sceptical eight years later. Heaven knows what we would have made of HD TVs.
The last word on colour television
Even after they’ve surmounted the paramount problem of raising enough money to pay for the latest status symbol, owners of colour television sets are going to be in for a few headaches living with them. If you haven’t got a disused photographic darkroom on your premises, then you’ll have to put your front room into a state of penumbra fit for a fraudulent séance or World War III if you want to have colours coming up good. The set must be degaussed and aligned carefully in the Earth’s magnetic field. Stray magnetic fields can play havoc with your tinted picture, and so large, ferrous objects such as comforting radiators and knights-in-armour with fire-irons in their bellies must be removed from the sacred vicinity, and all electric clocks, vacuum cleaners and pocket magnets declared persona non grata. And when the whole monster has been professionally set up, it’s going to be at least twice as difficult for the twiddling owner to tune as was the black-and-white steam model.
(7 March 1968)
So, weirdly sceptical about colour TVs, but wildly optimistic about any number of other mod-cons. We still couldn’t get it right.
Masterchef
In the household of 1977 there will be a prepared food unit. Frozen food packages will be stored in classified ranks below four ovens. In the morning you will set the time you want to eat, the meal containing up to four food items. At the correct time the unit will transfer the four food packages from freezer to oven. They will be ready simultaneously at your chosen mealtime.
(21 November 1957)
Tumble fryer
After 20 years of research, Paul Groves of Gloucester claims to have made a kitchen appliance that cooks, washes up and even washes clothes.
On the outside it looks like a chest freezer, but inside is a heating chamber and a revolving drum. Supplies of cooking oil, water and detergent are held in tanks. You put the food in the drum, and as it turns, vanes draw in hot air from the heating chamber to cook it. During cooking, food can be held stationary or tumbled in the drum. For frying, oil is injected as a mist. For boiling, a water heater produces steam.
When the meal is over, you put the dishes back in the same drum and switch the device to pump in water and detergent. A similar cycle is used to wash clothes. Groves says he expects the machine to cost about £800.
(26 August 1995)
We expect it to vanish. But then we would, because we know what happened. Outside the home, we thought we’d be eschewing the bus, and heading for the office at high speed…
What? No delays?
Any calculation of the future traffic requirements in ‘commuter country’ such as those parts of England south of the Thames must take into account the part which may be played by vertical take-off aircraft. Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane has now calculated the volume of traffic likely to be travelling at peak hours in relation to running commuters’ aircraft at 600 miles per hour between 200 take-off pads at distances of 60 to 120 miles from London and a similar number at terminals near the main railway stations in the capital. He has calculated that in 15 years the population of this region of England will have overloaded the capacity of the railway at rush hour. His proposal is for vertical take-off aircraft to meet the increased demand using modern guidance systems that can keep an aircraft on track ‘with an error measure in yards’.
Aircraft to London would depart when the London terminal was clear and within 14 minutes they would unload 110 passengers at an allotted pad, then refuel and be turned around within 7 minutes—60,000 passengers could be handled in an hour. Terminals would be no bigger than an acre and 360 aircraft would be required.
Instead of sitting on the stopping train the daily commute would be at 10 miles per minute by the end of the 20th century, a legitimate set of expectations which can no longer be ignored when envisaging the way of life in the future.
(16 February 1961)
In those days we knew how to fix the world’s problems…
Locust plagues ended
The world may have seen the last of the ancient scourge of the locust. This claim is being made by experts at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. They believe that international satellites that photograph the surface of the Earth mean that any sudden infestation of locusts can be nipped in the bud using modern pesticides.
Satellites can even spot conditions where the desert locusts are likely to breed rapidly and move into crop-growing areas, where a single swarm can consume 80,000 tonnes of corn a day—enough to feed 400,000 people for a whole year.
(21 April 1983)
…and if we didn’t know how to fix earthbound horrors, we could always move somewhere else. Somewhere the grass was going to be greener.
Little green plants
William M. Sinton of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory thinks it ‘extremely probable’ that vegetation of some form is present on Mars. He describes in the Astrophysical Journal how he studied the infrared light reflected from Mars when it made its close approach to the Earth last year.
He found a significant dip in the spectrum—a weakening in the reflection at a wavelength of 3.46 thousandths of a millimetre. This is just what one would expect if large molecules containing carbon and hydrogen are present.
Large organic molecules do not necessarily imply life. It seems unlikely, however, that organic molecules would remain on the Martian surface without being covered by dust from storms or being decomposed by the action of the solar ultraviolet, unless they possessed some regenerative power.
Here then, is the confirmation that the dark patches on Mars which wax and wane on its arid surface with the passing seasons consist of some form of plant life.
(28 November 1957)
Oh dear. But it’s all so easy when we know better isn’t it? The naivety of the past only looks like naivety today because we are a bunch of clever clogs with hindsight. Even so, you would have thought that, back in 1957, people would have known it wasn’t a good idea to scoff a mushroom you’d found up a Mexican mountain, although we’re glad somebody did. Roger Heim is a real oddball hero.
Divine mushrooms
The French Academy of Science was told last week by Professor Roger Heim, Director of the Paris Natural History Museum, of the extraordinary effects of a Mexican mushroom called ‘teonanacatl’. He found the fungus on a mountainside in southern Mexico.
The species known as ‘divine mushrooms’ was discovered by Mr Gordon Wasson, an American amateur mycologist, who has read of vision-producing fungi in old Spanish documents. He devoted ten years to trying to chase them. When eventually he succeeded in finding them and confirmed their strange vision-producing properties, he called in Professor Heim, one of the world’s leading mycologists, to investigate and identify the fungus.
In Professor Heim’s own words this is what happened when he ate a spoonful of the fungus. ‘Only a few seconds after I had swallowed my portion,’ he told the Academy, ‘I became subject to the optical and physical anomalies. The colours of the room in which I was became brighter. I had double vision. I suddenly felt in an extremely mirthful mood. During more than two hours a sort of fantasy in blue unfolded before my eyes.’
Back in Paris, Professor Heim twice repeated the experiment with the same results. The visions, he explained, were caused by a drug in the fungus, probably of the opiate variety. He thinks that an overdose of ‘divine mushrooms’ would cause mental derangement.
(15 August 1957)
…if the recipient wasn’t deranged already. And our own naivety showed through in 1959. It seems we’d been concerned about the effects of TV, especially on our younger generation. For once, we came out in favour of the gogglebox…
TV is our friend
Four years ago, when television was still a myth to most people and an intriguing novelty to a few million BBC viewers, it was quite widely feared as being likely to breed a crop of social ills. Parents were particularly bothered about the impact of television on their children.
Today we can feel reassured somewhat. At the suggestion of the BBC’s Audience Research Department, the Nuffield Foundation ‘decided to investigate whether by use of scientific methods it was possible to elicit some objective facts that would confirm or deny prevailing impressions’, and the results of this eliciting operation have now been published in a vast report at two guineas. It seems that the influence of television is considerably less dramatic than was feared, that most children absorb it without strain, except those who are of low intelligence or who are already afflicted with emotional problems or with disturbed families.
(22 January 1959)
Today’s parents will no doubt be delighted to know that it’s OK to let their kids watch TV—all they need to do is have their IQ tested or their child psychologically analysed first. So, finally, on to our treatment of women in decades past. We’ve already touched on paternalistic attitudes earlier in this chapter, and now it’s time to come clean. The world really was a different place all those years ago and New Scientist was as hideously sexist as they come, even when we were trying desperately to be right-on…
The under-employed sex
So far as grey matter is concerned, both males and females start out with equal chances. When the educationalists apply their IQ tests, no distinct difference between the sexes emerges. A look at any class in a mixed grammar school makes this obvious. All have passed their 11-plus, and are therefore supposed to be in the upper intelligence bracket. Half the class will be male; half female. Were it overloaded with males, there might be some justification for industry to operate a system of male supremacy.
An individual with Applied Systems and Personnel told me ‘girls sometimes make better programmers than boys because they have more patience and are more meticulous. An intelligent girl who has the patience to do embroidery has just the right mentality to do the job’.
(29 February 1968)
And back in those days, you really could print ads like the ones that follow without being hauled off for gender-attitude realignment therapy. These are so out-there that they’ve fallen over the edge of their flat Earth.
Careers in marine geology
There are vacancies for three geologists (one senior and two junior) with a sedimentological bent, and an affinity for the sea. Experience in sailing, surfing, skin diving or seafaring is an advantage but not a necessity, but adaptability and alertness are essential. There will be a pre-fab house for the senior man if married. For the junior posts single men are preferred, but married men are not debarred providing the wives can adapt themselves to rugged semi-camping conditions. The pioneering spirit is as important in the wife as in the husband. An interest in nature generally is a great asset to either. It is hoped to interview husband and wife together.
(9 April 1964)
Chemists are required
Graduate chemists with good honours degrees are required by this Group of Companies for both organic and inorganic positions, in the London and Midland areas. Commencing salaries attractive and progressive. Non-contributory pension scheme, assistance given with house purchase. A female would be considered.
(24 August 1961)
Wonder if she’d be able to run a paperless office? Ah yes, the paperless office. We are sure we predicted it more than once, we just can’t seem to locate the hard-copy evidence under the pile of old magazines and memos lying on the desk…
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