Don’t believe everything you read
Add comment March 21st, 2008
Sometimes the Internet is like a used book store. You just amble around, poking through boxes and cubbyholes and occasionally you find gold. Like this Web site, Modern Mechanix.
It’s a blog full of old photos and advertisements, including one for a double-barrelled cigarette holder (from the days when smoking was good for you!) and offers to reach financial freedom by starting an indoor poultry farm.
But my favorite post is about a 1955 article on automation and how it would make everybody’s life easier in the ensuing two decades. It’s from Mechanix Illustrated, a defunct how-to magazine in the tradition of Popular Mechanics. Here’s the article’s money quote:
THE YEAR is 1975. For a man of 50 leaving a factory gate at five in the afternoon, you look remarkably fresh. Your light, comfortable-looking summer suit is pressed and spotless, your face and hands are free of grime, and your features show no sign of the strain that men once associated with the heat and noise of a big factory. There is an extra spring in your step as you walk toward the heliport, perhaps because this is Thursday. Your four-day work week is over, and ahead of you are three full days to call your own.
Few factory workers are punching out after 32 hours a week these days, but the article did make some accurate predictions about automation. Namely, that the big jumps in productivity would mean fewer factory jobs for workers.
