Matt Novak

Long before email, it was predicted that traditional letters would be dropped off using the ever-advancing technology of the Space Age.

All you need is a projector and a willing prisoner.

Before Mapquest and Google, there was the "electric directory."

No, there were not. Here's how we know.

Never worry about distractions again.

Before they started playing music, LPs were used to play books for those who couldn't see.

This one was actually a real button, too.

Scientists are getting closer than ever to capturing the contents of our dreams, a goal since at least the 1920s.

We like our inventors to be lone geniuses, but it's almost always the case that today's giant is standing on the shoulders of yesterday's.

We're a long way from being able to predict temblors, but what if we had even a few moments of warning before the shaking started?

Nostalgic for the nostalgia of yesterday? Popular Science had a thriving enterprise in the 1930s that looked back at wacky inventions from earlier years.

Inventors have been trying to find a way to silence ads since way before Spotify, Pandora and Grooveshark

The vision of post-war air travel isn't all that different from what well-heeled fliers can get today, but what a long, strange trip it's been.

One mine in 1919 South Africa had a foolproof way to see whether its miners were smuggling out raw diamonds: it gave them a radiation-laden scan at the end of every shift.

Forget cellphones. The real danger from distracted driving is the car radio—according to observers in the days before Sirius, in-car DVD players, and even web browsers.

Steam-powered cars may sound like a shout-out to the early 1900s, but in 1970s California the idea was building up a real head of, umm, steam.

The traffic safety department is trying to get the nation used to today's silent cars. Something similar happened at the beginning of the 20th century.

An inventor's shocking solution for office doldrums

How a salt-of-the-Earth Midwest manufacturer learned to butter up customers and see its sales explode.

Bunny needles, puppy spoons, squirrel otoscopes. Here are some great, well-meaning ways to make children fear doctors AND cute fuzzy animals.

Popular Mechanics' 1950s DIY "home kinks" for picnic tables, paint cans, medicine bottles and more.

A 1920s design for an instrument that you don't hear but smell

Before viewing the retail experience became the province of TVs and tablets, if you wanted to see possible presents dancing around you had to head to the windows of downtown department stores.

Before silent movies evolved into talkies, various efforts to create the aural ambiance depicted onscreen included this roomful of noise-making contraptions.

Today's amusement park rides thrill with the frisson of danger, but for the rides of the last century the risk was more real than imagined.

The origin of the soundbite can be traced to the 1924 U.S. presidential election, the first one ever covered heavily by a broadcast medium, radio.

In simpler times the mere presence of a home-built police scanner was lauded as a home course in law enforcement. But has Twitter killed the police radio star?

In an age when horses might still be found on Madison Avenue, electric and gas-powered cars battled for supremacy on the ad pages of the elite publications of the day.

Who needs pipelines when massive hydro-cannons could blast water across California’s deserts?