Reading Fahrenheit 451 for the second time has given me a chance to relook at some aspects of the books I didn't notice before. When I read the book for the first time in 11th grade, I didn't pay as much attention to the little details because I was trying to understand what was happening in the book. In 11th grade my teacher pointed out a lot of the inventions Ray Bradbury predicted. If you look at many of the things in this book, they didn't exist in 1953 (The year the book was first published). Reading the book for the second time gave me a chance to realize all the predictions of future technology.
- First are the earbuds, called "seashells" in the book. In 1953 they had radio, but headphones definitely were not earbuds like they are today and in the book. Bradbury almost predicted little ear phones that would fit into your ear.
- Moving sidewalks and escalators are also mentioned in the book. I had to look up if escalators existed in 1953, and I found this, "The first patent relating to an escalator-like machine was granted in 1859 to a Massachusetts man for a steam driven unit." (Link to source) So, escalators did exist in 1953, but not the kind of moving sidewalks that Bradbury talks about in 451. They almost remind me of the moving sidewalks you find in airports or at Universal Studios, FL.
- Subways also existed in 1953, but in the book Bradbury talks about air-propelled subways. Aeromovel is the only air-propelled train I could find that exists today. Aeromovel has actually built two air-propelled trains, one in Brazil and one in Indonesia. Aeromovel was created in 1994.
- Bradbury also mentions sleeping pills in his book. Sleeping medicine is a very modern concept, and was just beginning to develop in 1953.
- Bradbury also described a machine that "slid down into your stomach like a black cobra an echoing well looking for all the old water and old time gathered there." This is a decent description of "stomach pumps", also known as gastric lavage. The dictionary defines this device as "a suction pump with a flexible tube inserted into the stomach through the mouth and esophagus to empty the stomach in an emergency, as in a case of poisoning." Although stomach pumps have been around for many years, including in 1953, the concept of using it after a suicide attempt was very rare.
Lily,
ReplyDeleteYou've touched on a really central idea in F51. All the "future" technologies that Bradbury wrote about are indeed things we see to some degree in our society today. In my Science Fiction seminar that I took in college, where we looked at seminal S.F. pieces dating back to the late 1800s, our teacher always liked to point out how authors like Verne, Bradbury and Clark were able to imagine a future that actually became realized.
I like how you listed all the different technologies, and your knowledge of them will certainly will come in handy during today's discussion. But heres something to think about--F51 is not just about predicting and talking about future technologies--its also about WHAT these technologies represent. Think about what each machine may symbolise in terms of the overarching themes of F51 as we continue to read!