Toys Are the Future of Philosophy
I have been wanting to do this since I was 5 years old,” Apple CEO Tim Cook proclaimed to a packed San Francisco auditorium on March 9, 2015. “The day is finally here.”
The standing ovation that Cook received as he announced the arrival of the Apple Watch, and revealed that he could make phone calls through a miniature microphone and speaker, showed that many techies shared his childhood fantasy. Lest anyone fail to recognize the origin of this collective dream, media outlets far and wide touted the product launch as the long-awaited debut of the two-way wrist radio, famously worn by Dick Tracy, the most celebrated comic strip detective of the 20th century.
In truth the wrist radio had been available since 1947, just one year after the cartoonist Chester Gould outfitted his undercover cop with the iconic gadget. In a comic book advertisement, a New York electronics manufacturer called Da-Myco offered “the most amazing invention you’ve ever seen” for $3.98 postpaid. Although the Da-Myco product lacked the fictional gizmo’s 500-mile range—and the diminutive crystal radio had to be hardwired to other units in order to communicate with them directly—it was “not just a dream … but a scientific reality”: an early-stage communications technology that allowed children to play out the future foretold in the comics.
The Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio is one of countless toys from the 20th century that prophesied the world in which we
