I’ve been looking at some scans from Mad Magazine from the range of years I would have been buying it as a child (it is amazing how instantly I recognize pages that I haven’t read in over 30 years) and I came across this one that jumped out at me. In the October 1982 issue, there is a feature on “Mad’s Theft and Vandal-Proof Products” which had a number of “silly” solutions to problems. One of them was a gun with a computer in the grip and a fingerprint scanner so that it only fired for the programmed user.
Except, of course, they are starting to make those now. Besides posting this just to share that something that used to be “silly” fantasy technology is now practical, I’m also idly wondering if this would be enough to use as “prior art” if anyone wanted to challenge any patent on fingerprint-based guns.
(Other items in the list are also real-world items today–graffiti-resistant paint (Mad suggested spraying walls with Teflon) and RFID tags (Mad suggested putting “tiny solid-state radio transmitters” in restaurant and hotel items likely to be stolen and have radio receivers built into the doorways.))
From the page scan you linked to it seems Mad also predicted cops shooting fleeing subjects in the back (of the head) even though they were no longer a threat to the cop.
Granted, it had probably occurred occasionally back then, too.
Logan’s Run (1976) Book- 1967
Going by memory, The Sandman Gun would self-destruct(or at least not fire) if anyone other than the assigned Sandman tried to fire it.
I remember a few things Mad predicted some years ago that are in use today.
A typewriter that recognized voices and typed whatever was spoken. We have voice recognition software in most computers, tablets, and smartphones.
Cars with collision avoidance systems. The front of the car had a radar unit built in that would put on the brakes if you got too close to the car ahead of you at too high a rate of speed.
Cars with built in breathalyzer units. In the Mad issue, jacks would lower from the car body and raise the wheels off the ground so they would spin uselessly. The ones in use today just prevent the car from starting if the driver’s BAC exceeds a pre programmed level.
They had an article about razors of the future and they joked how two blades would become become three, then four and then, ludicrously, five blades, if you could believe it.
Somewhere I have a CD ROM set that I bought a long time ago that has every Mad issue from the beginning to whenever it came out in the early 2000s. It was only missing a handful of articles they had to nix due to lawsuits and such.
The idea was around in science fiction before MAD, I’ve seen in in stories and the Judge Dredd Comics definitely had it in the 1970s with their “Lawgiver” guns that would severely injure anyone else attempting to use them. I don’t think anyone would try to patent ‘use a fingerprint reader with a gun’ since it’s too vague and has been used in all kinds of fiction and non-fiction before, any patent would be on something much more specific.
In general when you hear about patents in the news the reporters are reading the intro to the patent. When these thing go to court The lawyers are arguing about the claims which come later in the patent and need to be specific. Overly broad claims are almost always thrown out. This is not to say that there are not cases where you and I disagree with the judge or juries ruling about what is “generally known to those having skill in the art”.