I'm wondering if this has already been posted here. Anyway, genuine* clipping from the April 11, 1953 issue of The Tacoma News Tribune.
But notice that he's correct in basically every assertion
- no escape (particularly relevant since I am without a mobile phone at present, so, for the moment, have escaped)
- no dial
- carried around like a watch (in fact, for most people, has replaced their watch)
- can see the other person when talking
- translate on the fly - not quite there yet, but we're getting pretty close.
*passes the Snopes fact check: test https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cellphone-prediction-from-1953/
So spot on it almost feels fake.
That was the comment they made on History Daily, where I first saw it and since I don't really know that site, I decided to check Snopes.
Your comment got me curious whether there was info on Mark R. Sullivan. Randy Cassingham has done a bunch of research that makes for a really interesting read. He also answers a question that popped into my mind when I read the original article linked above: when did d##k Tracy get his watch phone?
Answer: 1946 (but I was wrong in remembering it as a phone; it was a two-way radio). I turns out, however, that Martin Cooper, inventor (one of the inventors??) of the handheld cell phone in 1973 took his inspiration from Dick Tracy.
Anyway, if you found the link in my first post interesting, I would say Randy Cassingham's full article (which I guess is a transcript of a podcast) is really cool - photos of Sullivan, his background (born 1896, started working for the phone company as a clerk in 1912).
Cassingham points that the Tesla had many of these elements in place already in a 1926 prediction in an interview in Collier's magazine:
QuoteWhen wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
https://thisistrue.com/054-pre-silicon-valley/
Quote- translate on the fly - not quite there yet, but we're getting pretty close.
THESE REAL-TIME IN-EAR TRANSLATOR EARPHONES HELP YOU FLUENTLY SPEAK IN AS MANY AS 40 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
https://www.yankodesign.com/2021/01/18/these-real-time-in-ear-translator-earphones-help-you-fluently-speak-in-as-many-as-40-different-languages/
Great find ergophobe. Looks like your conversation partner would need a set, also. Seems an over-the-ear model would be better for that.
Still, great way to listen to folks while traveling abroad.
I'm just astounded, based on two data points from the 1990s.
1. A company at that point tried to get my publisher to let them publish translations of their works using cutting edge tech. As proof, they provided their letter as translated into French. We just died laughing. It was gibberish and they were proposing to translate 16th century texts.
Now, I often use Google translate to check my grammar. It's quicker than using a dictionary to look up whether a verb uses "de + infinitive" or "à + infinitive" for example. I am really surprised at just how good Google Translate has gotten. If you have a strong knowledge of multiple languages and haven't looked for a while, take a look.
Even more surprising is that even the Latin translations are sometimes okay. My Latin was never great, but now it's terrible and though G Translate is nowhere close to as good as it is for French, it actually is a significant leg up even for Latin.
2. Around the same time, I was creating an edition of articles from a scholar who had been active in the 1950s-1970s. We gathered his journal articles and tried to scan them in and use OCR and the error rate was astronomical. On glossy paper with a serif font we wound end up with entire pages that looked like: innninmilll ninjijll
Now, when I scan similar things, it's close to perfect. Or think about how in aughts, Google Books had transcripts that were often utter gibberish. Now they still aren't great for older books, but the are wrong in predictable ways (like mixing up i and j).
The point being, 25 years ago, there was almost no machine translation of even the simplest texts and the ability to recognize *print* was terrible, let alone speech.
I'm not sure whether to be flabbergasted at how much better the tech has gotten or how much older I am!