100 year old cartoon predicts modern cellphones

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Darren_Garrison

(Coincidentally, there was a Phillip Reade writing Science Fiction about Thomas Edison, Jr in that time period.)

That Philip Reade, a pseudonym, may have been referring to the signal officer, but more likely trying to play off the bestselling Frank Reade, who had been writing the most popular series of young genius inventors for a decade.

I have a page of early predictive cartoons on my website, some of them prescient, some charming, and some horribly bigoted. The early 20th century had hugely popular humor magazines - life and Judge in America, Puck in England - and they loved satirizing the present by extrapolating it into the future.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Magiver

I’m just amazed at how accurate the cartoon predictions were.

Not quite.
One of the panels shows the recipient asking “Who is it?”. Something that is almost unknown with cell phones now, since they mostly identify the caller before the call is answered (and many users wont answer unknown numbers). This Caller ID, along with individualized ringtones for certain callers, is an unpredicted feature.