In 1934 the president of Northwestern University , Walter Dill Scott , predicted that engineering would radically change the college experience .
Distance learning would be more common thanks to TV , radio , and fax . And change bookman would change the forcible landscape of the environ schooltime . President Scott was n’t altogether wrong , but the future did n’t arrive quite like he imagined .
From the September 1934 government issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics powder store :
The university of twenty - five years from now will be a unlike looking station , says President Scott of Northwestern . rather of contract faculty and students around a campus , they will “ commute ” by air , and the university will be smother by drome and hangars . The course will be carry on , to a large extent , by radio and pictures . Facsimile broadcasting and television will expound greatly the ambit of a library ; and research may be carried on by scholars at great distance .
The magazine publisher even ran a toon ( above ) illustrating this vision of a future scholar ’s TV - filled Education Department , while also poking merriment at the fact that students can be super faineant .
It ’s easygoing to forget just howoptimisticeducators were about telly before it became a pragmatic reality for the mediocre American . Many people of the thirties guess that TV would provide a practical blackboard that any student could tune up into from dwelling . And prof might eventeach remotely , thanks to the fantastic communication technologies being develop .
https://gizmodo.com/predictions-for-educational-tv-in-the-1930s-512620881
But the time to come never quite pan out on the dot as we reckon . And whether it ’s analogue - TV blackboards or streamlinedbubble - top cars , it ’s always fun to reckon the future that never was .
Image : Scanned from the September 1934 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics magazine
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