How 1940's Whiskey Ads Predict the Near Future and Beyond!

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Back in the mid-1940s, Seagrams advertised its VO Canadian whiskey with a series of extremely manly magazine ads about Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow.

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Top Stories and News Events as You Dine April 1946 - This ones pretty uncanny Seagrams predicted the rise of the sports bar, down to the fact that theyd eventually be festooned with giant flat-screen TVs. For understandable reasons, however, the distiller mistakenly believed that said bars would be filled with natty proto-Mad Men sipping whiskey, not drunken louts swilling beer.

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Communications of Tomorrow February 1946 - From left, clockwise: A golfer uses a mobile phone that looks uncannily like an early Motorola brick, a businessman dictates into his auto-voice-recognition-printer, a road warrior takes advantage of a street-corner fax machine, and someone checks a message courtesy of the answering feature built into his phone. Not all of this came true, but some of it did. Come to think of it, speech-to-text voicemail conversion is one of Google Voices killer features, and it only took sixty-three years for it to get here.

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Groceries on Wheels April 1944 - One of the amazing mobile supermarkets which Seagrams said would rush fresh foods to the housewifes door! by making scheduled stops on every block. Its pretty much like Webvan, except you can squeeze the cantaloupe for yourself. Note that these ads were so masculine that no housewives are depicted here.

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Perfected television and radio telephone combined! This is supposedly a Chicago businessman using a videoconferencing system with color screen, yet to talk to his rep in London.

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Nine years before the first 3D movie boom and sixty-six years before Avatar, Seagrams told whiskey drinkers that theyd go to 3D movies more thrilling than any you ever dreamed of! This being 1943, the movie shown involves fighter jets soaring above the audience and soldiers stomping right through it. I believe that the person to the left dressed like Flash Gordon is an usher

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Harnessed Power of Tomorrow March 1944 - In the future, giant vacuum tubes will harness the virtually boundless energy of electrical stormstransmitting it to storage plants that will furnish fantastically cheap power to industries and whole cities. And making your local power plant look a little like it was designed by Dr. Frankenstein

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The Portable Radio-Telephone October 1944 - Todays weapon, tomorrows convenience! Seagrams explained that the wireless phone was already in use by the armed forces, and would soon become a consumer product it ended up taking fifty years before cell phones became truly common. In this demonstration, a fisherman phones his wife to relay good news about his catch and ask her to invite the neighbors for dinner

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The Facsimile Newspaper of Tomorrow November 1944 - Fantastic? Its already planned for post-war use! This TV has a built-in fax machine that spits out a newspaper with coverage of the events you watch on-screen. I cant quite tell if the paper is astonishingly up-to-the-minute, or the TV report isnt a live broadcast, or if the fire has been going on for hours.

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The Office of Tomorrow March 1945 - In Seagrams futuristic workplace, theres a videoconferencing box on every desk, and assistants helpfully visualize essential business data on giant screens. All the while, distant smokestacks gracefully pump toxic fumes into the atmosphere. The ad makes reference to records which appear as if by magic from automatic files I think its referring to robotic filing cabinets, not hard disks. Im also intrigued by the several unmentioned gizmos on the deskmaybe they include a proto-iPod, a rudimentary Flip, and a pseudo-BlackBerry.

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Skyway Delivers Spiral Goods April 1947 - Free idea for Fedex: Expedite air shipments by dropping shipments from planes in whirligigs with cushioned rubber compartments for packages. You gotta think that these would occasionally go astray and crush random passers-by. Even so, it might be worth it.

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Deserts Will Bloom Through Atomic Power May 1947 - In the future as envisioned by Seagrams, atomic power will somehow make it possibly to build bountiful farms in the desert. I believe that the things in this painting that look like dozens of tiny mushroom clouds are actually plants. At least I hope they are.

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Traveling Kitchens Deliver Packaged Dinners June 1947 - Here we have a van that delivers piping-hot gourmet meals to Americans who live in compact, servantless homesand yes, the chow is prepared by chefs onboard the vehicle as it zips around the neighborhood. The customer has two highballs made with Seagrams VO all ready. As far as I know, nobody has actually implemented this idea to date. But if you did, I bet you could find some venture capitalists whod pony up some cash to make it happen

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Tomorrows Supermarket September 1945 - Part drive-in, part automat, this supermarket lets you choose grocery items from showcases with a special key. When you use the key, a signal is sent to a basement stockroom to add the item to your order, which is delivered to your car when youre finished shopping. I like the fact that all the cars shown in all these paintings are 1940s modelsthey thought this stuff was just a few years away.

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Shopping Comfort October 1945 - Pedestrians of tomorrow all of who will apparently be men in hatswill rejoice when cities build moving walkways, cool them with hidden pipes, and cover them with transparent canopies. This reminds me of A The Jetsons and B Las Vegas.