From 1958 to 1962, illustrator and futurist Arthur Radebaugh thrilled newspaper readers with his weekly syndicated visions of the future, in a Sunday strip enticingly called Closer Than We Think! While Mr. Radebaugh tackled a wide variety of topics, covering everything from weather control to spaceflight, for the purposes of this article we will focus on his automotive prognostications, like the solar-powered car pictured above. Let’s take a look at some of his works, and see how accurate his predictions were, now that we are living in his future (click to enlarge any of the images).
The future was boundlessly optimistic in the late 50’s and early 60’s, with the promise of abundant and cheap atomic energy seemingly just around the corner. The atomic powered car pictured above seems just plausible enough, with the reactor tucked safely away in the far behind the passenger compartment, before you realize how ridiculous the whole idea actually is. What happens if you get rear-ended? Do I need a license from the NRC to operate it? Do we really want fissile material in the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Saddam?
As a fellow northerner (Mr. Radebaugh hailed from Michigan), I have a warm spot for this next concept. Who hasn’t dreamed of just melting the snow away with a flame thrower when shoveling their driveway? I know I have! A vehicle that shoots open flames out the front? Don’t see what could possibly go wrong there. At least Radebaugh grasped the immense thermodynamic challenge of this scenario, as witnessed by the long train of fuel tanks to feed this beast.
The dream of self-driving cars has been around for almost as long as the automobile itself, so of course Radebaugh took a stab at that as well. His vision is actually pretty consistent with most early views of autonomous vehicles (at least up until the 1980’s or so): Vehicles guided by navigation aids embedded in the road. I suspect that the way autonomous cars are actually implemented today (computerized vision, AI, laser-powered LIDAR and satellite-based positioning) would probably have seemed too far-fetched even for Radebaugh.
Arthur Radebaugh’s vision was certainly not lacking in ambition. Some of his ideas were B-I-G. Take, for example, this underwater glass-roofed freeway connecting Alaska and Siberia. Where exactly was all the vehicular demand for this arctic road, connecting the least populous regions of both countries, going to come from again? And just what is this shark (a warm water fish) doing in the Arctic? Still, I can’t deny the appeal of driving to Siberia with the top down.
While some of Arthur Radebaugh’s ideas were plausibly grounded, others seemed like they were barely one step removed from Mad Magazine, like the color changing car above.
The Mobile Gas station is an idea that looks patently ridiculous, at least as depicted above. But today there are at least a half-dozen companies and apps that offer on-demand mobile fueling, with cutesy names like Filld and Booster.
Indeed, this would have been even possible with the technology of Radebaugh’s day (albeit with more conventional delivery vehicles) so I grade this prediction an A.
Here is another idea that is not too far off the mark. A family fleet of at least three vehicles seemed so outlandish in 1962 that Radebaugh figured you would have to share a single power source among all of them just to make it feasible. Of course many of today’s family fleets are this size or larger, including my own family’s fleet of five, each of which thankfully has its own independent source of power. Good thing too, because I really can’t see Mrs. Halter wheeling a powertrain from my car and installing it into hers every time she wants to go somewhere. Radebaugh also gets bonus points for predicting the rise of electric drivetrains.
Finally, no collection of future automobile tropes would be complete without a flying car, so of course Arthur Radebaugh tackled this one as well. At least his vision (which looks a lot like the Ford Nucleon) is somewhat realistic by being limited to floating just above the ground on a cushion of air, kind of like a hovercraft without the skirt.
Hovercraft already existed back in Radebaugh’s day, so this idea not as far-fetched (or futuristic) as some of his other visions. Hovercraft are not very effective without a skirt, so if the noise doesn’t scare poor Fido off, the jet-engine force blasting from the fans would certainly will blow him away. What I think Radebaugh was actually aiming for here was magnetic levitation, another futuristic technology that really was just around the corner, with the first working Maglev train being built in 1979.
Arthur Radebaugh died in 1974, before seeing much of the future he predicted come to pass. While he died in relative obscurity, his work is now being more appreciated and well-known as part of the “Retro Futurism” movement, which looks back at past visions of the future, and of which I am a big fan. As near as I can tell, his works have never been republished, but many of his Sunday strips are available online by Googling his name.
When I was a kid, I thought of the future in terms of the Jetsons. Now, I wonder if Wall-E wasn’t closer to the mark.
Fascinating. These ideas look like an odd mix of Syd Mead’s futurism and Bruce McCall’s fantasies.
He did some great ads for Chrysler in the fifties, too, as well as his classic futurist Bohn ads. Really interesting artist.
Now that’s really cool ! I’m a fan of this “retro-futurism” as well, while the stuff I’m working on is closer in style to 1910s – 1920s.
Just some side notes:
Sharks as warm water fish – not necessarily, actually there are sharks which live exclusively in the Arctic (Greenland shark etc.) They are endotherms (warm-blood creatures) and have other biological adaptations to cold environments. For anyone who is interested I’ll add a link to an article on the subject:
https://www.sharksider.com/sharks-of-the-arctic/
“Quick-change car colors” – I think that should be possible with present day tech, just very expensive and unpractical (and don’t ask my “how” )) ).
“Mobile gas station” – hey look, those futuristic vehicles still need to be lubricated with a grease gun !
“Flying carpet car” – actually something vaguely similar existed in late 1950s or early 1960s (GAZ-16), it was really a small gas turbine powered hovercraft without a skirt. A working, but very inefficient concept that didn’t go anywhere. I think I’ve posted some info about it here on CC, but couldn’t find the post. Here are some photos of it, anyway:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/e/eb/GAZ-16_hovercraft.jpg
http://discussio.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/7.jpg
Oh, and they even made a short film about it (in Russian) in 1963:
When we invaded and occupied Siberia in 1918, part of the project was a highway from Seattle up to Alaska and across the Strait, along with telegraph and telephone lines to connect us with our intended “colony”. We did build some of the road and wires in Alaska and in Russia, but we abandoned our invasion before the rest could get done.
Also, snow-melting machines are fairly common. You wouldn’t want to do it in your driveway because there’s nowhere for the water to go, but cities and airports can suck up the melt. The machines look a lot like Radebaugh’s version.
The car in the 2nd photo reminds me of Supercar one of the first puppet series done by Gerry Anderson who did later Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, UFO, Space 1999.
That “Flying Carpet” car looks a lot like a GM “Aerotrain” to me:
I can just imagine the Hot Rod articles and ads now
“U-235 mixed with Pu 238 = 100+ horsepower increase!”
“Parsons vs. Dyson turbines in the 1980 Chevy, we check it out!”
“How to up the output of your reactor in just a weekend using common tools”
“How to convert your gas powered ’55 Chevy to nuke”
“What to do when your reactor springs a leak”
Edelbrock steam pipes and Holley water pump ads in the back
I suppose these are one thing through the eyes of those old enough to have been reading the Sunday comics then, and another thing to younger CC-ers. FWIW, here’s the 1958 tunnel proposal in brief:
The present does seem disappointing, 21st century but energy which is plentiful and free for everybody is not even on the horizon.
Re: color-changing cars – isn’t that what a “wrap” is? Not fast or cheap, tho!
Yes, if wraps were available for anywhere close to $1.50 (even in 1950s dollars) we would see a lot more of them.
What a great imagination! I think the self-driving vehicles may be the closest thing to real-life versions of his ideas.
Closest I’ve seen to a mass-produced solar car is the Prius Solar Roof option, which runs the ventilation system while parked. Don’t know if it functions while driving.
Mazda had that with the 929, way back in the nineties.
It’s more about the attitude back then than the actual items. We’d look through Popular Science magazine to see what was “just around the corner”. There wasn’t anything we couldn’t do! Don’t worry about the details, we’ll figure it out soon, hell, we’re going to the moon. My father actually worked on the Martin Snap series of small nuclear reactors. Although used for space vehicles, there were plans for a home version, limitless free power. Imagine!
It still could come to pass, at least at the level of a small town. NuScale just passed Phase 1 review by the NRC.
I just love this stuff, thanks. I was a kid then and ate it up. I don’t remember this series in particular then, but such predictions were so common it was pretty much understood that the future was going to be fully atomic and rocket-powered. Too bad it’s not. Maybe it will be yet…
The future isn’t what it used to be.
My nuclear powered steam turbine car would melt driveway snow just fine, if I could get the fuel, he missed a good combination there,
flying autonomous cars have yet to appear and Ive been reading about them forever.
Railroads do have bare jet engines mounted on a crude frame at a downward angle for clearing tracks of snow and ice. There is a fan-shaped nozzle on the lower end.
Supposedly will shoot a 100# spike keg pretty far if it hits one.
Ones my employer had were short little carts that get pushed along by an engine. Can’t remember where the fuel tank is, but not big.
If you follow the web comic XKCD (written by a former NASA engineer), the web site has a section called “What if?” where he gives serious scientific answers to absurd questions submitted by readers. In one of them he gave a good explanation of why the snow melter wouldn’t be practical. The short answer: It would require an insane amount of energy, three times the amount generated by the reactor in a nuclear aircraft carrier.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/
“Tom”,is your REAL name George Jetson,or Bruce McCall?
“The future ain’t what it used to be.” I remember reading these comics in the Sunday edition the Kansas City Star in the ’50’s-at that time there were all sorts of glowing predictions for the future-none of which ever panned out. I’m still waiting for the flying car, thanks for the memories.
As one whose career has centered around fender benders, I cannot imagine the mayhem that would come from flying cars. We have proved conclusively that humans have trouble enough when driving involves only 2 dimensions. Adding a third is frightening to consider.
No such thing as a fender-bender in the air. Every collision would likely be fatal.
I remember the library at my primary school had some futurist type books that had illustrations of all sorts of advances that were coming. Just short of Jetsons type things in some areas. I’m sure we have passed the timeframes they were predicting, and we haven’t colonised the moon yet, for example.
Be sure to check out the documentary (full disclosure: I directed the film) Closer Than We Think about the life and art of Arthur Radebaugh. Trailer is up on my site (Clindar.net) or just go to CloserThanWeThink.net