In July 1959, the magazine Look ran an article describing the “miracle kitchen” of the future, ostensibly about the amazing advances that Americans would see in their own homes. In reality, it was part of a much larger propaganda battle of the Cold War — and it involved a proto-roomba.
The 30-minute 1952 film Mother Takes a Holiday was produced by the Whirlpool Corporation to sell washers and dryers. Whether it achieved this goal or not I really don’t know, but it’s a fascinating artifact of post-war techno-utopian thinking, slathered with a healthy dose of sexism.
This is The Whirlpool — the common name of M51, a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way estimated to be 50,000 to 100,000 light years across. The purple dots that make it look like the biggest neon sign in the Universe are X-ray sources as seen by NASA’s…