The ‘Future’ Of Trucking...In 1964

Youngster asks.

Umm, why is that picture black and white?

Old Fart remembers:

Back in the days of film cameras, BW film cost a lot less to buy and process than color film. The outside photo, the main "show" photo was done separately from the inside pics. Probably done with a large format camera. Inside is probably one of several from the shoot.

I'll shut up now.

Shhhhh Don't tell him TV used to be in black & white, and there was only 3 channels back in the olden days !! hahahaha

Shhhhh Don't tell him TV used to be in black & white, and there was only 3 channels back in the olden days !! hahahaha

And if the president was on you didn't have anything to watch but him talking!

Shhhhh Don't tell him TV used to be in black & white, and there was only 3 channels back in the olden days !! hahahaha

Well, if you were lucky, you had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and maybe an independent station.

Dave

Wow, it was "computer designed" by engineers! Now I realize that the youngsters here probably don't appreciate that their smartphones and laptops probably have more computing power than the entirety of the Ford Motor Company had in 1964, but I'm still waiting for my daughter's generation to design a truck with a ladder that automatically lowers itself for access to some space-age truck cab.

On the other hand, lots of trucks have refrigerators and ovens. I don't see many with a wash basin or a drink dispenser, though. The TV dinner was a relatively new product back then too.

I wonder what the Navy ended up using those 600 hp gas turbine engines for. Didn't the Army use something like that in the original humvees and in Abrams tanks?

Shhhhh Don't tell him TV used to be in black & white, and there was only 3 channels back in the olden days !! hahahaha

Well, if you were lucky, you had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and maybe an independent station.

Dave

Except PBS didn't start until 1970. We had literally three stations, and Dad had to use the rotor to turn the antenna to Omaha, Sioux City, or Des Moines to get them. Bad weather meant we couldn't always get them all.

The first show we watched on our first color tv was the very first episode of Happy Days in the fall of 1969. I suddenly realized how much better all those episodes of Bonanza and Batman probably would have been if I had been able to see them in color.

Shhhhh Don't tell him TV used to be in black & white, and there was only 3 channels back in the olden days !! hahahaha

Well, if you were lucky, you had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and maybe an independent station.

Dave

Except PBS didn't start until 1970. We had literally three stations, and Dad had to use the rotor to turn the antenna to Omaha, Sioux City, or Des Moines to get them. Bad weather meant we couldn't always get them all.

The first show we watched on our first color tv was the very first episode of Happy Days in the fall of 1969. I suddenly realized how much better all those episodes of Bonanza and Batman probably would have been if I had been able to see them in color.

I'm reminded of an episode of The Golden Girls, where Blanche and Rose are watching an all-night I Love Lucy marathon. They decide to leave the living room for some reason I can't remember, and Blanche tells Rose they can watch it on the portable TV in the kitchen, to which Rose wails "But that TV's black and white!"

Fatsquatch remembers:

I'm reminded of an episode of The Golden Girls, where Blanche and Rose are watching an all-night I Love Lucy marathon. They decide to leave the living room for some reason I can't remember, and Blanche tells Rose they can watch it on the portable TV in the kitchen, to which Rose wails "But that TV's black and white!"

And the Golden Girls knew the time when no one could even spell TV!

I've always loved technology. When I was in like 4th grade I knew everything a kid could find in books about the NASA program. I knew all of the Apollo missions, the astronauts, the fate of the missions, and tons of facts and figures about the spacecraft. But I never get excited about concept vehicles or advanced technologies until I actually see them on the roads, in the skies, or in the malls and this concept truck from 1964 is a great example why - 95% of our cutting edge technologies never make headway in our lives.

The thought that our airplanes are still designed like buses with wings or that virtual reality is still "getting better and almost ready for mainstream" like it has been for the last 40 years or that we don't have cars that hover using electromagnetism or that we're still driving gas and diesel burning V8's and straight 6's shows that it really doesn't matter what we're capable of, most of it will never see the light of day outside of a test facility.

The technology that we actually use in our day to day lives is dictated by two things it seems:

1) Will it be highly profitable?

2) Can the people promoting the new technologies overcome the blocking tactics used by those making big money off of old technologies?

Now the next "big thing" in my opinion, if anyone ever lets it get off the ground, would be drones. They have a million uses from transportation to package delivery to law enforcement to whatever you can dream of. But will they ever make headway in our lives? Probably not. I wouldn't be surprised if 30 years from now you can buy drones on Amazon and you might know someone that has one but they won't be used for much in the way of commercial enterprise.

The technologies we use aren't dictated by what we're capable of. They're dictated by what the powers that be will allow. Such a shame because, for instance, we could have an amazing forum that projects holograms of everyone right in front of us! But instead, here we are with the modern Web which even after 20 years in the mainstream is nothing more than a digital newspaper for the most part. And we all still struggle continuously to get a decent wireless signal once you leave the burbs. What a shame.

That video of Big Red is cool as heck though! What an awesome machine!