Saturday, January 3, 2009

The Usborne Book of The Future

Before I get into this book, we need a lesson on history. Please read the following:





Indeed, I hand-write all my blog entries and scan them into the computer for more efficient posting.

You may be wondering where I pulled this incredible piece of bullshit from. It's out of a book I picked up for 99 cents called "The Usborne Book of The Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond." It was written in 1979, some thirty years ago.



I have many of Usborne's books in my collection, which are mostly books about computer programming in BASIC. They were beautifully illustrated books that were also teaching tools, and this book is no exception. ...well, except for it being a teaching tool; The illustrations are still beautiful. Comparing Usborne's vision of the future to our history makes this book an aboslutely hilarious read! However, the scariest part of this book was the inscription on the inside cover:



I was going to post a link to a site that had the entire book scanned (there were a couple of them) but it seems that the author of the book is a big meanie, going around the internet and demanding the removal of all scans. Don't worry, you can sniff around the internet and find places you can download it (or buy it).

I'll post a few scans to wet your appetite:

Page 44: Wristwatch Radios!
Page 52: The Olympic Games, Year 2020
Page 73: Electric Cars with Tape Players!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Heh heh. I had this book when I was a kid and it imbued in me a wild-eyed enthusiasm for the future, which would of course be fantastic. Although the biggest thing for me at the time was thinking that in the year 2000 I'd be able to have a beard.

What scared you about the inscription?