We get the cul­ture our tech­nol­o­gy per­mits, and in the 21st cen­tu­ry no tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment has changed cul­ture like that of the smart­phone. As with every piece of per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy that we strug­gle to remem­ber how we lived with­out, it evolved into being from a series of sim­pler pre­de­ces­sors that, no mat­ter how clunky they seem now, were received as tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels in their day. Take it from Mar­tin Coop­er, the Motoro­la Engi­neer who invent­ed the first hand­held cel­lu­lar mobile phone. “We did­n’t know it was going to be his­toric in any way at all,” he says of the first pub­licly demon­strat­ed cell­phone call in 1973 in the Bloomberg video above. “We were only wor­ried about one thing: is the phone going to work when we turn it on?”

The device Coop­er had in hand was the pro­to­type that would even­tu­al­ly become the Motoro­la DynaT­AC 8000X, the first com­mer­cial portable cel­lu­lar phone. (This as dis­tinct from the exist­ing car-phone sys­tems that Coop­er cred­its with inspir­ing him to devel­op an entire­ly hand­held ver­sion.) Brought to mar­ket in 1983, it weighed about two pounds, took ten hours to charge a bat­tery that last­ed only 30 min­utes, could store no more than 30 phone num­bers, and cost near­ly $10,000 in today’s dol­lars.

Yet “con­sumers were so impressed by the con­cept of being always acces­si­ble with a portable phone that wait­ing lists for the DynaT­AC 8000X were in the thou­sands,” says Motoro­la design mas­ter Rudy Krolopp as quot­ed by the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute. “In 1983, the notion of sim­ply mak­ing wire­less phone calls was rev­o­lu­tion­ary.”

38 years after “the brick,” as the 8000X was known, we’ve grown so used to that notion that many of us hard­ly ever make wire­less phone calls any­more, pre­fer­ring to com­mu­ni­cate on our phones through text mes­sages or an ever-expand­ing uni­verse of inter­net-based apps — to say noth­ing of the oth­er aspects of our lives increas­ing­ly han­dled through palm-sized touch­screens. “The mod­ern smart­phone is a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel,” says Coop­er. “It real­ly is incred­i­ble, all the stuff that is squeezed into that cell­phone.” Yet despite the aston­ish­ing evo­lu­tion of his inven­tion it rep­re­sents, he’s not sat­is­fied. “We think that we can make a smart­phone that does all things for all peo­ple, and yet we know that it does­n’t do any of those things per­fect­ly. We’ve still got a ways to go.” If you’re read­ing this on a smart­phone, know that you hold in your hand the “brick” of 2059.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

When We All Have Pock­et Tele­phones (1923)

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Sci­en­tist Cre­ates a Work­ing Rotary Cell­phone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Not long after Niko­la Tes­la died in 1943, the world seemed to for­get him. The first pub­lic trib­ute paid to his con­sid­er­able research and devel­op­ment in the realm of elec­tric­i­ty there­after came in 1960 with the intro­duc­tion of the tes­la, the SI unit of mag­net­ic flux den­si­ty. But in the decades since Tes­la has enjoyed an after­life as an icon of under-appre­ci­at­ed pre­science. Some of this rep­u­ta­tion is based on inter­views giv­en in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was still a celebri­ty. Take the short Col­liers mag­a­zine pro­file from 1926 in which he fore­sees the emer­gence of devices that will allow us “to com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er instant­ly, irre­spec­tive of dis­tance”; a man, Tes­la pre­dicts, “will be able to car­ry one in his vest pock­et.”

This arti­cle is one source of the words spo­ken in the Voic­es of the Past video above. In it, Tes­la also speaks of a future huge­ly enriched by the “wire­less ener­gy” he spent much of his career pur­su­ing. It will pow­er “fly­ing machines” in which “we shall ride from New York to Europe in a few hours.” A house­hold’s dai­ly news­pa­per “will be print­ed ‘wire­less­ly’ in the home dur­ing the night.”

Thanks to instant world­wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion, “inter­na­tion­al bound­aries will be large­ly oblit­er­at­ed and a great step will be made toward the uni­fi­ca­tion and har­mo­nious exis­tence of the var­i­ous races inhab­it­ing the globe.” All the while, new gen­er­a­tions of ever bet­ter-edu­cat­ed women “will ignore prece­dent and star­tle civ­i­liza­tion with their progress.”

Many will applaud Tes­la’s views on the advance­ment of women, though here his think­ing takes a turn that may give pause even to the most for­ward-think­ing among us today: “The acqui­si­tion of new fields of endeav­or by women, their grad­ual usurpa­tion of lead­er­ship, will dull and final­ly dis­si­pate fem­i­nine sen­si­bil­i­ties, will choke the mater­nal instinct, so that mar­riage and moth­er­hood may become abhor­rent and human civ­i­liza­tion draw clos­er and clos­er to the per­fect civ­i­liza­tion of the bee.” The inven­tor of alter­nat­ing cur­rent has much to say in favor of api­an soci­ety, “the most high­ly orga­nized and intel­li­gent­ly coor­di­nat­ed sys­tem of any form of non­ra­tional ani­mal life.” And so why not restruc­ture human civ­i­liza­tion around a sin­gle queen?

This video also draws on a 1937 inter­view with Tes­la in Lib­er­ty mag­a­zine, which fea­tures even more dis­com­fit­ing propo­si­tions. “The only method com­pat­i­ble with our notions of civ­i­liza­tion and the race is to pre­vent the breed­ing of the unfit by ster­il­iza­tion and the delib­er­ate guid­ance of the mat­ing instinct,” Tes­la insists. “The Sec­re­tary of Hygiene or Phys­i­cal Cul­ture will be far more impor­tant in the cab­i­net of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Sec­re­tary of War.” Despite per­haps hav­ing crossed the line into mad-sci­en­tism, Tes­la remained inci­sive about the per­sis­tent con­di­tion of humans under high tech­nol­o­gy. “We suf­fer from the derange­ment of our civ­i­liza­tion because we have not yet com­plete­ly adjust­ed our­selves to the machine age,” he claims. “The solu­tion of our prob­lems does not lie in destroy­ing but in mas­ter­ing the machine.” Here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, of course, many of us would be con­tent sim­ply to gain mas­tery over the one in our vest pock­et.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la: As Told by Tech­noil­lu­sion­ist Mar­co Tem­pest

Futur­ist from 1901 Describes the World of 2001: Opera by Tele­phone, Free Col­lege & Pneu­mat­ic Tubes Aplen­ty

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The anti-dis­trac­tion device is the mod­ern mouse­trap: build a bet­ter one, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or so, at least, will the part of the world engaged in the pur­suits we’ve broad­ly labeled “knowl­edge work.” Even among the knowl­edge work­ers who’ve spent most of the past year in pan­dem­ic-prompt­ed iso­la­tion, many still feel besieged by unend­ing claims on their atten­tion. Laments at hav­ing been ren­dered unpro­duc­tive by con­stant dis­trac­tion go back at least to medieval times, but the pro­posed solu­tions to this long-stand­ing prob­lem change with — and reflect — the times. Take the “Iso­la­tor,” the for­mi­da­ble-look­ing wear­able machine above that debuted on the cov­er of July 1925’s Sci­ence and Inven­tion mag­a­zine.

“Per­haps the most dif­fi­cult thing that a human being is called upon to face is long, con­cen­trat­ed think­ing,” writes inven­tor Hugo Gerns­back in the accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle. “Most peo­ple who desire thus to con­cen­trate find it nec­es­sary to shut them­selves up in an almost sound­proof room in order to go ahead with their work, but even here there are many things that dis­tract their atten­tion.”

Even absent such nui­sances as “street nois­es” and the “tele­phone bell,” the mind seeks out its own dis­trac­tions as if nat­u­ral­ly com­pelled: “You will lean back in your chair and begin to study the pat­tern of the wall­pa­per, or you will see a fly crawl along the wall, or a win­dow cur­tain will be mov­ing back and forth, all of which is often suf­fi­cient to turn your mind away from the imme­di­ate task to be per­formed.”

Gerns­back­’s solu­tion involves a large hel­met, lined with cork and cov­ered in felt, with a baf­fle for breath­ing and glass eye­holes to see through. Paint­ed black but for two thin bands, the eye­holes make it “almost impos­si­ble to see any­thing except a sheet of paper in front of the wear­er. There is, there­fore, no opti­cal dis­trac­tion here.” To pre­vent drowsi­ness, “the writer intro­duced a small oxy­gen tank, attached to the hel­met. This increas­es the res­pi­ra­tion and livens the sub­ject con­sid­er­ably.” And so we arrive at the set­up pic­tured below, orig­i­nal­ly cap­tioned, “The author at work in his pri­vate study aid­ed by the Iso­la­tor. Out­side nois­es being elim­i­nat­ed, the work­er can con­cen­trate with ease upon the sub­ject at hand.” The Iso­la­tor’s patent appears just above, one of 80 for var­i­ous inven­tions that Gerns­back held in his life­time.

What­ev­er the device con­tributed to Gerns­back­’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, there can be no ques­tion that the man got a lot done. Not just a con­trib­u­tor to Sci­ence and Inven­tion but also its pub­lish­er, he over­saw a small media empire whose oth­er peri­od­i­cals includ­ed Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics, Sci­en­tif­ic Detec­tive Month­ly, the sin­is­ter-sound­ing Tech­noc­ra­cy Review, and Amaz­ing Sto­ries, which launched in 1926 as the first mag­a­zine devot­ed entire­ly to sci­ence fic­tion (or “sci­en­tific­tion,” as Gerns­back called it). For his advance­ment of the genre he was hon­ored by the World Sci­ence Fic­tion Society’s Annu­al Achieve­ment Awards, bet­ter known as the “Hugos.” Pulp-fic­tion­al though the Iso­la­tor may have looked in 1925 (as indeed it looks now), it rep­re­sents a gen­uine effort to alle­vi­ate with tech­nol­o­gy a both­er­some aspect of the human con­di­tion — and a prece­dent for the new-and-improved iso­la­tion hel­mets engi­neered for the even more dis­tract­ing world in which we live a cen­tu­ry on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

The Ben­e­fits of Bore­dom: How to Stop Dis­tract­ing Your­self and Get Cre­ative Ideas Again

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

Pico Iyer on “the Art of Still­ness”: How to Enrich Your Busy, Dis­tract­ed Life by Unplug­ging and Stay­ing Put

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

What Hap­pens When You Spend Weeks, Months, or Years in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

There was a time, not long after the wide­spread adop­tion of teleg­ra­phy in the 19th cen­tu­ry, when the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage looked doomed. Or at least it did to cer­tain thinkers con­sid­er­ing the impli­ca­tions of that instant glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabling tech­nol­o­gy hav­ing been devel­oped for the rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple Latin alpha­bet. And as unsuit­ed as the Chi­nese writ­ing sys­tem must have seemed to the world of the tele­graph, it would have pre­sent­ed a seem­ing­ly even heav­ier bur­den in the world of the type­writer.

Only in 1916, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-educated Shang­hai engi­neer named Hou-Kun Chow, did the Chi­nese type­writer debut, built around a large, revolv­ing cylin­der that could print 4,000 ideo­graph­ic (that is to say, each one rep­re­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent word or sound) char­ac­ters. From that point the evo­lu­tion of the Chi­nese type­writer was rather quick, by the stan­dards of the day. And it did­n’t only hap­pen in Chi­na: Japan, whose own writ­ten lan­guage incor­po­rates many ideo­graph­ic Chi­nese char­ac­ters, had been sub­ject to more intense tech­no­log­i­cal influ­ence from the West since open­ing to for­eign trade in the 1860s.

The very year after its found­ing in 1939, elec­tron­ics-giant-to-be Toshi­ba (the prod­uct of a merg­er involv­ing Japan’s first mak­er of tele­graph equip­ment) pro­duced the first Japan­ese cylin­dri­cal type­writer. “Most­ly used by the Japan­ese mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II,” says the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um, it incor­po­rat­ed 630 char­ac­ters. After the war “Toshi­ba intro­duced a new mod­el, the 1200 A, fea­tur­ing 1172 Japan­ese and Chi­nese char­ac­ters.” In the video above, from Youtu­ber by the name of Type­writer Col­lec­tor, you can see a slight­ly lat­er mod­el in action.

Pro­duced before the intro­duc­tion of “West­ern-style” key­boards, the Toshi­ba BW-2112 has the same inter­face as its pre­de­ces­sors: “The char­ac­ter is select­ed by rotat­ing the cylin­der and shift­ing it hor­i­zon­tal­ly, so that the nec­es­sary char­ac­ter is select­ed with the index point­er,” accord­ing to the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um. “When the print key is depressed, the type strip is pushed upwards from the cylin­der, and the type ham­mer swings to the cen­ter to print the char­ac­ter onto the paper.”

These vin­tage Japan­ese type­writ­ers still today strike their view­ers as mar­vels of engi­neer­ing, though their then-vast store of char­ac­ters (which includ­ed not just Chi­nese-derived kan­ji but pho­net­ic kana and even the Latin alpha­bet) have long since been sur­passed by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Now that every stu­den­t’s smart­phone puts all 50,000 or extant Chi­nese char­ac­ters in their com­mand — to say noth­ing of the world’s oth­er writ­ten lan­guages — it’s safe to say they’re not about to fall into dis­use any time soon.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

When IBM Cre­at­ed a Type­writer to Record Dance Move­ments (1973)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Free Chi­nese Lessons

Learn Japan­ese Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.