MRS FUTURA TALKS TO ALEXA IN 1946
Posted by STEVE M on
Just feast your eyes on this Mullard advertisement from 1946. Mrs Futura looking at a thin screen TV, may we presume this to be an LCD one even? As we all know, the first wall-mountable TV used LCD technology and was introduced by Sharp Corporation in 1991 and was a whopping picture frame size of 8 inches, followed a year later by a 17 inch model. Amazing that Mullard predicted this some 45+ years ago!
But that's not all, she is speaking in an Alexa-esque manner to the TV intent on ordering roses. All predicted by Mullard some 68 years ago!
Interestingly, Alexa was developed out of a Polish predecessor named Ivona which itself was invented by Łukasz Osowski who was inspired by a combination of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Majel Barret's computer voice on Star Trek TNG (1998). Having bought not just the IP but the Ivona company, Amazon renamed and launched Alexa on November 6, 2014.
I can happily confirm that Alexa does not order resistors nor pirogi for the Mullard Magic household though.