43 Years Ago In TIME

TIME has a long tradition of reporting on promising new technologies. Back in 1960, the magazine pledged to "capture the excitement, diversity and oddity of U.S. inventiveness" in its cover story on gadgets that would soon be available to the American consumer:

"Dial-an-appliance" ... enables a housewife who is downtown shopping to start dinner before she starts home: she simply telephones her home, then by dialing additional digits turns on the oven, sets it to cooking the roast.

High-style paper clothes that can be thrown away after a few wearings are being developed by American Cynamid, which is also experimenting with high-fashion paper hats. Paper pup tents and sleeping bags are now on sale.

A facsimile-mail system. To be tried by the Post Office for the first time next month, it may revolutionize mail delivery ... Letters will be opened automatically, their contents electronically scanned and transmitted in less than a second. At the terminal points, the letters will be reproduced photographically, put back in the envelopes and delivered by special messenger.

— TIME, Sept. 19, 1960