Students at Shenandoah University in Virginia recently opened a time capsule from the ancient, mysterious world of 1993. What did they find inside? Bizarre contraptions like a so-called “cassette tape.”
The 1932 version of The Mummy starring Boris Karloff is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, right up there with the 1930s versions of Dracula and Frankenstein. And now an extremely rare movie poster for The Mummy could become the most expensive in the world after it goes up for auction starting today and…
Facebook announced its new Portal hardware today, a limited-purpose device that allows users to video chat on Facebook almost exclusively. And there’s something strangely retro about the concept: This is the standalone videophone device that George Jetson had in the 1960s and that AT&T imagined in the 1990s—the device…
You might not know the name Will Vinton. But if you grew up watching TV in the 1980s and 90s, you definitely know his work. Vinton was the genius behind claymation characters like the California Raisins, the Domino’s Noid, and the M&M’s before they were taken over by CGI. Vinton died yesterday of cancer after a…
Leon Lederman, the former head of the Fermi National Accelerator Lab and winner of the the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988, died at a nursing home in Idaho on October 3rd. He was 96.
There were a lot of incorrect predictions before the 2016 presidential election. A lot of incorrect predictions. Savvy political insiders told us again and again that there was no way Donald Trump was going to become president. But I think I may have found the funniest prediction of them all.
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams recently posted an interesting question to Twitter. Adams shared a graph showing that the percentage of people between the age of 18 and 34 who live with their parents skyrocketed after 2008. Adams tweeted, “The iPhone was launched in 2007. Is it a coincidence?” The implication, of…
Futuristic headlines here in the year 2018 might make you ask “why?” But back in the 1950s, illustrators in Detroit were asking “why not?” And perhaps nothing demonstrates that thinking better than this comic strip from 1958 by Arthur Radebaugh.
Frank Serafine, a respected sound engineer and composer with a wide-ranging career in film, has died at age 65.
Fritz Kuhn was a despicable man. But he and his fellow Nazi followers in the United States thought he had a valuable reputation to protect. Which is why Kuhn sued Warner Bros. for libel in 1939 after the Hollywood studio released a film called Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
You’re probably familiar with the old sayings, “where’s my flying car?” and “where’s my jetpack?” But the most depressing question for plenty of space nerds from the 20th century might be, “where’s my vacation on the moon?” And I just got really depressed reading a paper from 1987 about the space travel advances we…
Did you ever imagine what the future would be like when you were a kid? We all did. Some of us were obsessed with jetpacks and robots, while others dreamed of videophones and space travel. It was “all of the above” for two kids in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, who imagined what the futuristic world of 1999 would look…
Who could forget the events of August 29, 1997—when Skynet became self-aware and launched a whole mess of nukes, unleashing “Judgment Day?” Today’s a holiday for Terminator fans, and it’s also a great excuse to celebrate our favorite sci-fi movies that feature AI rebellions. Let’s bid a warm welcome to our new robot…
The world of invention is famous for its patent disputes. But what happens when your dispute wasn’t with another inventor but whether the Patent Office saw you as a person at all? In 1864, a black man named Benjamin T. Montgomery tried to patent his new propeller for steamboats. The Patent Office said that he wasn’t…
If you ever wanted to own a piece of Apple Computer history, now’s your chance. Provided you have a spare $300,000 lying around.
Humanoid robots are still relatively primitive here in the 21st century. Sure, we have Roombas that can vacuum our floors and Boston Dynamics robots that are doing backflips. But when it comes to the dream of our own personal robot servant, we’re still in the Dark Ages. You can’t go down to Costco and pick up a fully…
When I was a kid, my favorite movie in the world was 1985's Captain EO. Yes, the 17-minute Michael Jackson sci-fi fantasy played at the Disney theme parks, but it also made an appearance on TV. My parents recorded it on VHS for me, and I honestly wore out the tape rewatching it so many times. And if you loved the…
Do you love science fiction and/or Disney theme parks? Well, you may want to hold your breath. Next week in Los Angeles, there’s an auction of vintage Disneyland memorabilia.
Donald Trump only understands the world through the lens of popular culture. And a new story from The Daily Beast illustrates that perfectly.
Rare movie posters are going up for sale later this month in a Sotheby’s auction that includes a very special find: The world’s first movie poster, according to the Guardian, created in 1895.
