The Retro Blog

“Mars and Beyond” is a 1957 episode of “Disneyland” the tv series in which the folks at Disneyland contemplate life on other planets and man’s quest for understanding of the world around him. I like to think of it as Mickey Mouse’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The episode is introduced by Walt himself with his personal [...]

If the winner of The Cold War was going to be determined by who had the most awesome looking new technology, I think the Ruskies would have been miles ahead of us. You know Sputnik looked sweet, but what about this lesser known project, EPIK. This flying saucer like aircraft was being designed in secret [...]

Everybody’s favorite furniture designers, Charles and Ray Eames, produced this film to help people learn about computers called “A Computer Glossary: Or Coming to Terms with the Data Processing Machine.” It looks like an episode of Schoolhouse Rock that’s been to art school for layout design.

[via laughing squid]

I must say that “test pilot” has never been an appealing sounding job to me. In the 50’s, though, it seems as though there were plenty of people quite happy to perform the task. Have a look at this gallery of all the exciting and dangerous looking toys these test pilots got to play with. [...]

Hey guys, remember tennis for two? Now you can build your own! [via boing boing]

Here’s a gallery of some interesting vintage exercise equipment. It all looks quite heavy and perhaps painful. I’d like to see some late night infomercials with Chuck Norris trying to sell these things.

Old electronics are some of the easiest retro items to find at garage sales, thrift stores and the like. People are quick to do away with their vintage electronics because they seem so incompatible with modern technology. If you’re in the mood for a little “do it yourself,” however, there are a lot of great [...]

I think being a tester for Consumer Reports would be a pretty sweet job. Who wouldn’t want to spend all day beating up a bunch of products to see what it takes to make them break? I think this job was probably most fun back in the 50’s and 60’s, when a ton of new [...]

This Disney Innoventions Dream Home currently in Tomorrow Land reminds me of how there seem to be houses of the future every few years and yet I never see half the stuff in them implemented.
Here’s a look at a kitchen of the future from 1967. Thing is, most of the stuff they showed is very [...]

As you can likely tell by the fact that I’m a 22 year-old maintaining a blog about the 1950’s and 60’s, I’m really into false nostalgia. This is why I think the emotoscope is a brilliant idea. Essentially it’s viewfinder that makes the world around you look like it’s playing out in super 8mm. You [...]

I think it would have been pretty cool to be a nerd in the 1950’s. You know how I’d impress my nerdy friends? With a Curta calculator. Designed in 1948, this fishing reel-like device could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and even complicated calculations like square roots. The device even has a cutesy nickname: the [...]

I was born in an era where one use flashes were a thing of the past, but to the swingin pseudo mods in this Kodak commercial, flashcubes were probably pretty exciting. These nifty little devices were tiny cubes with a one use flash on each side, allowing the photographer to shoot four flash exposures before [...]

When the average person thinks about the history of video games, Pong typically springs to mind. But what came before? All the way back in 1958, a select group of nerds were getting very excited about a game called Tennis for Two. The game was invented by physicist William Higinbotham to entertain visitors at the [...]

What do Hitler and The Beatles have in common? A love for this distinctive looking microphone. Not only is it gorgeous to look at, but the sound is divine. Readers of this blog probably already know that retro mics reign supreme over their modern counterparts, so take a moment to appreciate the interesting history of [...]

Oh boy, how the people of the past loved their cigarettes. Back when smokers were celebrated rather than shunned and forced to huddle together in cold, stinky alleys behind bars, creative inventors loved to keep the nicotine flowing. Modern Mechanix posted a wonderful little roundup of such devices. Marvel at the clever methods people used [...]

When going to a fair or amusement park in the first half of the twentieth century, you had many options for entertainment. You might go on the swings, or a thrilling ride on the wooden roller coaster, or maybe you would just stare at some tiny babies in glass bubbles. Modeled after similar devices used [...]

The other night I was watching 60 Minutes when this lovely little segment appeared:

Two thoughts came to my mind:
1. When did 60 Minutes become Jackass with a budget?
2. Why isn’t that ray-gun more awesome looking?
I’ll address only issue two here. This thing looks like a giant black tray with a hole in it stuck on [...]

Here’s a short video of a man going on a quick jetpack ride over Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Why don’t we all have jetpacks in the 21st century? I guess there’s the whole thing about them being extremely inefficient. And judging by the pained faces of the kids in the video covering their ears hard enough [...]

Polaroid recently announced that it is going to end all production of instant film. Although this isn’t as devastating to me as two years ago when Kodak slit the throat of Kodachrome (how I love thee, super 8), but there’s still something sad about losing a unique method of creating images. Pre digital, there was [...]

I’ve been keeping an eye on these electric bikes from Schwinn for a while. The battery gives you an extra push when you get tired. I think I’d be inclined to ride a bike more often if I weren’t so intimidated by San Francisco’s landscape. It’s certainly not the worst looking bike, and it [...]