How-To Geek
Fiction to Reality Timeline Charts Introduction of Sci-Fi Concepts to Real Life
Videophones, voice-controlled computers, heads-up displays, and other technological innovations made their first appearances in Sci-Fi. This dual timeline charts the first appearance in Sci-Fi against the date of commercial success for the product in the real world.
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Comments (16)
Jason Fitzpatrick is warranty-voiding DIYer and all around geek. When he's not documenting mods and hacks he's doing his best to make sure a generation of college students graduate knowing they should put their pants on one leg at a time and go on to greatness, just like Bruce Dickinson. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 04/5/12
This is a bit too optimistic though. Tactical Lasers DO NOT EQUAL Death Star!!!
“Interplannetary Travel” first appeared in Sci Fi in 1980 (Star Wars V)? Really? They could have at least referred it to 2001 A Space Odyssey (which came out in 1968, not 1976, as they state elsewhere in the chart).
really?
voice command went to siri..
this is a joke.
the hole timeline chart is a bad joke
@ dean
It’s also a little bit strange that they wrote Hitchhiker’s Guide for voice command but used an image of HAL 9000
““Interplannetary Travel” first appeared in Sci Fi in 1980 (Star Wars V)?”
Doctor Who (1963), Star Trek, Flash Gordon or….. the list goes on. interplanetary travel was around in fiction long long before star wars. very very sloppy “research” there.
This is all a sham & a flagrant misuse of justice…I’m contacting my lawyers !
AT&T committee meeting:
“…and add a cheesy outer glow. It’s futuristic! like different colored LIGHT SABERS. can we add MORE lines to the background? grey diagonals, like websites from 2001… that gets the people going! i like it how my eyeballs to bleed from squinting from following light saber lines against the background”
…handheld communicators were first in star trek 3: search for spock?
srsly? you couldn’t even google the right picture?
Nice chart.
But, as other have noted, the dates of attribution seem a little “off”. For example, they attribute the Star Trek handheld communicator to the 1984 Movie “Search for Spock” — not to the original TV series. Doubly odd since the photo they use is in fact from the TV series.
Seriously, I occasionally get a useful article from How-To-Geek…but it is getting more and more rare and this article is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. That is the silliest piece of crap I’ve seen in weeks. Editors, please get your act together and start putting out less content if that is what it takes to increase the quality to noise ratio to something that is worth my time.
That chart made no sense at all.
Someone should be fired for including this erroneous att tripe. I suggest the contributor as well as their editor.
This chart is complete garbage. Did the howtogeek staff even look at it before they posted it?
@superfahd: Have you ever seen The Colbert Report? Because I do remember an episode where he says about a laser array: “We have a Death Star!”
Bad chart. It’s full of mistakes, I wasted my time reading it.
Come on people its called Fiction to Reality.
The fiction is the dates and info while the reality is as mentioned in most of the posts above.