‘Mysterious Monuments’ on the Moon, 1966

The first spacecraft to land on the Moon and transmit photographs back to Earth was Russia’s Luna 9, launched on January 31, 1966. It landed in the Ocean of Storms on February 3, and sent the first of nine images of the Moon’s surface seven hours later. One of these photos, according to an Argosy article by Ivan T. Sanderson from 1970, showed what appeared to be “two straight lines of equidistant stones that look like the markers along an airport runway…”

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Film & TV

Vladimir Tarasov’s ‘Contact’, 1978

Released in 1978, Vladimir Tarasov’s Контакт (Contact) is a short Soviet animated film that attempts to tackle the question of how communication between two sentient species—one of them extraterrestrial—might occur…

Computers, Science & Technology

‘Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record’, 1978

Murmurs of Earth was published the year after the 1977 launch of the twin space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. While the Voyager program’s primary mission was to survey, photograph, and analyze the planets of the outer solar system, the book focuses on our attempts to communicate with whatever intelligent entities might encounter the probes as they flew headlong into the interstellar night…

Games & Toys

Major Matt Mason: Mattel’s Man in Space, 1966 – 1970

The Matt Mason line was developed by Mattel to compete against Hasbro’s G.I. Joe, which debuted in 1964 along with the the descriptor “action figure”—the social reality of the day dictated that boys would not and should not play with “dolls.” While the “Joes” were 12″ tall, Matt Mason and his “space buddies” were reduced to 6″, a brilliant decision by Mattel…

Computers, Science & Technology

TI-99/4A Computer Books, 1983 – 1987

Texas Instruments (TI), which had pioneered both pocket calculators and speech synthesizer technology in the 1970s, released its TI-99/4A home computer in 1981. After the release of its first personal computer, 1979’s TI-99/4—a fairly substantial commercial disaster—TI went back to the drawing board to produce a home computer that was cheaper, easier to use…

Photon Instructional Video, 1986

In 1984, an entertainment center was opened in the Dallas suburb of Garland that aimed to bring the futuristic imagery and technological thrills of space opera warfare into the real world: it was called Photon, a laser tag game in which two teams fought one another in a bloodless, computer-controlled simulation set in a multi-level arena filled with dry ice and lit by strobe lights…

Adventures in Atari BASIC: Lesson Seven – Music and Mission Briefings

By Mikey Walters

In Lesson Six, we saw how Space Assault’s enemy ships move and attack with a semblance of intelligence, learned how to create an Atari “earthquake,” and generally completed our coverage of the core of the game’s code. Now it’s time to explore the incredible sound capabilities of the Atari home computer, including music and exciting effects…

Continental Airlines Commercial, Circa 1976

Prior to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the fares, routes, schedules, and establishment of commercial airliners were controlled by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). While regulation meant smaller profits for the airliners, it also meant guaranteed profits: the result amounted to a monopoly that was “too big to fail.” The supposed “golden age” of air travel, as depicted in the commercial above, was actually the result of so many half-empty planes in the sky…

Fiat “Handbuilt by Robots” Commercial, 1978

In the post-Star Wars era of 1978, robots—or “‘droids”—had ceased to be the ambiguous, threatening machines of yore. Now, they were cheerful helpmates for humanity who labored tirelessly (and free of cost) for the benefit of all. In a world suddenly obsessed with futuristic technologies, their appearance in an advertisement was sure to be noticed—especially by the younger members of any potential car-buying family…

K-tel Music Compilation Commercials, 1970 – 1984

Television advertising in the 1950s took a fairly staid and classic form: the advertising agency would spend 30 to 60 seconds presenting a domestic problem that its client’s product promised to alleviate. But the dawn of the 1960s introduced a more aggressive, hard-sell type of direct advertising, where the product’s manufacturer would sell a product directly to the TV viewer through product demonstrations…

Selections from ‘Living for Today’ by Karen Fisher, 1972

The return of millions of American veterans in 1945 resulted in something of a dilemma: there were not enough homes for them and their rapidly expanding families. Spurred by low interest rates provided by the G.I. Bill, as well as low cost housing (a furnished home could be had for as little as $400 down)…

Westminster Typeface, 1964/1965

Together with Bob Newman’s perhaps better known 1970 typeface Data 70, the Westminster typeface represented a significant shift in the intrusion of the digital world into the real one, and still remains a potent and evocative symbol of futurist aspirations and fears…

‘TV Guide’ Covers by Richard Amsel, 1972 – 1985

Richard Amsel (1947-1985) was an American artist and illustrator whose professional career spanned only 16 years, from 1969 to 1985. But in that short time, he created some of the most iconic promotional images of the time in music, movies, and television…

Double Exposure: ‘Roboterwerke’ by Supersempfft and ‘Inter-Dimensional Music’ by Iasos

By Richard McKenna and K.E. Roberts

Supersempfft was Franz Aumüller, Franz Knüttel, and Dieter Kolb—three school friends from the central German region of Thuringia, together with Roboterwerke, the drum machine Knüttel built after realizing how poor his drumming was…

‘For You’ by Tatsuro Yamashita, 1982

Tatsuro Yamashita is one of the most famous musicians from the City Pop genre, an eclectic blend of rock, funk, jazz, and disco that was omnipresent in 1980s Japan. To me, listening to City Pop evokes feelings of speeding down a Tokyo freeway on a sunny day or dancing in a neon lit disco somewhere in Shibuya…