How People From 1955 Imagined Technology of the Future

Illustration: Bettmann (Getty Images)

“When milady goes food shopping in 1975, there’ll be no lengthy waiting at a check-out counter,” this slide read. “The improvement, pictured here, will be an automatic computer that will price all the items as they pass under an electronic eye.”

The first question some from the 21st century is likely asking with an illustration like this: Where are the barcodes? While the barcode was invented in the late 1940s, they wouldn’t make their way to US supermarkets until the 1970s. How is this “electronic eye” scanning the food? Perhaps it just knows what a carrot looks like and why it’s different from cheddar. Your guess is as good as ours.