Vintage Future VIII

42 years ago this past Friday, Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first ever cell phone call to Joel Engel of Bell Labs. Cooper was calling Engel to troll him about the fact that Motorola invented the thing first, although it was another 10 years before the company released the DynaTAC 8000X. So yeah…even the very first guy talking loudly on his cell was kind of a jerk about it.

That decade between trash talk and commercial introduction brought to mind our Vintage Future series in which we take a tongue-in-cheek look back at the failed predictions of past generations of investors and futurists, and the sometimes tortuous routes to success of unlikely ideas.

In our line of work it’s good to guard against the hubris inherent in projecting conventional wisdom too far out into the future, and to remind ourselves that today’s trend can be tomorrow’s punchline – and vice versa.

Back in 2010 in “Entrepreneurial silver lining in today’s economic clouds” we mentioned that the patents for the Television, Jukebox, and Nylon were all granted during The Great Depression, and although we can’t confirm any patent information on the chocolate chip cookie, it too was invented at the same time (1930 to be precise).  In this, our VIII^th installment of Vintage Future, we share some of the less successful ideas from the Great Depression.