Tomorrow's World: Genius Gadgets and Gizmos: Weird and Wonderful Contraptions from Yesterday's Future

by David Stubbs (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.25

  Now, that we have arrived in the future, and we're not wearing silver space suits to work or eating pills instead of food, we can look back with some amusement on Tomorrow's World. Illustrated throughout and structured by theme, this book will recall the best of TW's occasional successes and frequent failures. Kieran Prenderville was demonstrating cds as early as 1981, but more true to TW form was 'Hissing Sid', a snooker-playing robotic arm which, when challenged by Prenderville on the baize, combined the temperament of Rod Hull's emu with the ineptitude of Clouseau.We were promised miracle chopping boards, but they never made it to retail, and giant, Prisoner-like bubbles inside which commuters could traipse across the Thames haven't arrived to solve inner-city congestion. We're still waiting for holographic videophones, cybernautic sheep-shearing devices and flying cars, too. With profiles of the main presenters dropped in throughout, critiquing their presenting skills, sartorial statements and science credentials, this trip back to the future has the irresistible pull of nostalgia, but is also a glorious celebration of a very British tradition in Heath Robinson-esque solutions to life's little problems.