What's Always Next?

By Rebecca Winters

--VIDEOPHONES Engineers said the Picturephone, unveiled at the 1964 World's Fair, would replace standard phones by 2000. Forty years later, consumers still balk at the high price--and at losing the ability to take calls in their underwear.

--A MOON COLONY The New York Times in 1960 predicted "a flourishing civilization on the moon twenty or thirty years hence." The first moon landing was in 1969, and we're still waiting for the place to go co-op.

--FOOD IN PILLS Those apple-pie pills the Jetsons popped sure looked neat. But--unless you count PowerBars--food that's purely functional hasn't taken over store shelves.

--CARS THAT DRIVE THEMSELVES The idea of an "automatic vehicle" first showed up in concept cars of the 1950s. Sensors in the road and the car were supposed to do all the work, but they have never moved past prototype. Unlike, say, seat warmers.

--JET PACKS After the test pilot of a rocket-propelled backpack told Popular Science magazine in 1969 that the machine made him "feel safer than I do driving the family car in traffic," it seemed Buck Rogers-style travel for everyone was imminent. But a mass-market model never managed to fly.

--MOVING SIDEWALKS They were part of the '64 World's Fair "City of the Future." An exhibit of scooters and Rollerblades would have been more prophetic.