Always the pessimist…

April 12, 2013 by · Leave a Comment 

The Allegany County Reporter” issue, dated July 28, 1887, with a lengthy article on the “Exhaustion of Petroleum” could have been written 5 years ago or 30 years ago, but in fact it was  from 1887. Great evidence that pessimism was alive and well over a century ago. Enjoy the entire text of the article (shown below):

The Traveler… the strike is over… looking to the future…

April 1, 2013 by · Leave a Comment 

Today I journeyed to Detroit, Michigan by the way of The Detroit News of April 1, 1963. There I found that people of New York city would be able to enjoying their daily papers again as the 114-day newspaper strike had ended. Newspaper headlines read as “New York’s Alive Again!”, “Well, Hello There! We have News For You” and “Read All About It – Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”. “A series of labor disputes had shut down the papers for nearly four months and cost the city’s economy an estimated $250 million.” Some of the newspapers came back to print with the price of the issues being raised by half, some even doubled the cost per issue.

The back page of the issue features an article “Economists See a Future of Abundance – Full, Rich Life Only 40 Years Away… The Year 2000”. This is an interesting look at four decades into the future with articles of “Note of Caution on Planning”; “Ample Resources Seen for Future”; “More Funds Urged for Research”; “Taller Americans, Bigger Appetites”; “Energy Demand Due to Triple” and more. It also includes four interesting illustrations of the futuristic glimpses of life (see image below or click on link above). Ready to use your car that is able to take to the air to avoid the heavy traffic on the turnpikes and freeways?

~The Traveler

It never caught on…

March 26, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

This “Novel Hydraulic Railway Locomotive” made the front page of “Scientific American” on Feb. 10, 1877, with a descriptive article which begins: “A new mode of traveling has lately been invented…”.  Apparently it never caught on:

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