A 1953 newspaper article predicts exactly what the telephones of the future will look like.

We don’t know if he is a time traveler, a visionary or a seer. The truth is that at Fayerwayer we named it the “Nostradamus of Technology”. An article from 1953 predicts what the telephones of the future would be like.

It wasn’t just any subject who randomly threw a prediction. Whoever said this was an expert in telephony at the time (70 years ago) which at the time was completely different from how we know it now.

This is Mark R. Sullivan, director of Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co, who announced in 1953 that no one was going to be able to “escape from telephones.” The publication of this expert was made in The Tacoma News Tribune, La Vanguardia review.

We have to put ourselves in context before knowing what he said. Let’s understand that in 1953 telephones were luxuries of the upper-middle class. Making a call was communicating with a central that transferred you to the final receiver; unfeasible for this time.

Understanding that scenario, let’s see what Mark said, we repeat, in 1953:

“In the future there will be no escape from phones

Mark R. Sullivan, San Francisco, president and director of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., said in a speech last night:

‘What form the phone of the future will take is, of course, pure speculation. This is my prophecy:

In its final development, the phone will be worn by the individual, perhaps as we wear a watch today. You probably won’t need a dial or equivalent, and I think users will be able to see each other, if they want, while talking.

Who knows what can translate from one language to another”.

What Mark describes is nothing more than any cell phone today with a camera through which you can make video calls. It sounds normal, but at the time, maybe he was branded crazy for saying that.