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June 1967 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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In his 1967 Radio-Electronics
magazine column, editor Forest Belt envisioned the 1970s as a decade of radical
electronic transformation, where homes would become "total-electronic" environments
controlled by advanced technology - from computer-assisted cooking and video communicators
to 3D television, laser communications, and even sleep-enhancing atmospheric systems.
He urged electronics professionals, experimenters, and service technicians to prepare
for this future, emphasizing that innovation and broad technical expertise would
be critical to meeting consumer demands for ever-newer gadgets and conveniences.
Belt warned that technicians who failed to adapt would be left behind, while those
mastering emerging fields like fuel cells and heatless cooking could secure lucrative
careers as "total-home technicians," maintaining the complex electronic ecosystems
of tomorrow's households. He stressed that much of this technology already existed,
imploring readers to start integrating and servicing these systems immediately to
stay ahead of the coming revolution.
Our Electronic Future - From the Editor
 By Forest H. Belt, Editor
The 1970's are less than 3 years away. What will you be doing 3 or 5 or 10 years
from now?
Homes in the 1970's will approach a "total-electronic" idea - every possible
use of electronics, some of them unknown today. In the R&D lab, you can be creating
electronic contrivances framed in concepts now only hinted at. In your home and
office, you can be living, playing, and working in unimaginable electronic comfort.
In your service shop, the electronics you see and work with today will have evolved
into fascinating new household and entertainment devices.
Do you see yourself in one of those pictures? If you like electronics as much
as most of our readers do, you will be making the most of these sweeping changes
- and, in fact, helping move them along.
You electronic engineers and lab technicians will catch the brunt of a demand
to advance home-electronic technology in high gear. The heat will be on you to create
some entirely new form of home entertainment. Room-size 3-D color television and
3-D sound will be nice, but old hat; consumers take things for granted very quickly
and then demand new ideas, new products, new entertainment, new worksavers.
The broader your training and awareness of new developments, the more likely
you'll be in the avant garde whose success stems from innovative talent. If you're
an advanced experimenter at home, your chance is exceptional to come up with ideas
that will move the total-electronic concept ahead in broad leaps.
Even if your electronic interest is passive, you can't escape the effects of
the all-electronic way of living. Your wife will cook and shop by computer and call
you to dinner by private video communicator. Your office will, unattended, forward
data and messages to your work center at home for you to evaluate and process. You'll
find the facts you need in your home-computer file, or you can get them from a central
information-retrieval system you can dial on your visual dataphone. You can help
the children with their homework the same way. At night, you'll be able to study
by electronic mind-stimulation while you slumber in a sleep-inducing atmosphere,
computer-controlled for your very own preferences of humidity, temperature, circulation
and scent.
If you're a service technician, you have the brightest opportunity of all. The
technician of 1970 can be a different sort of guy from that of today, because his
electronic surroundings will be changed. For the technician who is prepared, the
future is assured. The shop owner who says "I don't have time to read about fuel
cells and 3-D and laser communications and heatless cooking and all that stuff"
is hiding his head in the sands of his present work; come the 1970's, he won't have
a competitive chance.
Look again at the house with electronics controlling almost every function. Who
will keep such a house working? Homeowner-handyman? Not a chance. Plumber? Electrician?
TV repairman? Their training won't be up to it.
The total-electronic home will need a total-electronic-home technician. He can
be called simply a total-home technician, because to say "total-home" will mean
electronic. He will be an electronic generalist - a shirt-and-tie man who is paid
for his knowledge and training. He can do well financially with 100 total-electronic
homes on maintenance contract with a yearly fee.
He will have to know his business well. The half-trained skimp-along technician
will eventually pack his tools and find a field that's less demanding. The total-home
owner will be extremely dependent on some technician's skill; he won't bother with
an incompetent or a technician with marginal training.
Most significant, however, is this: Much of the technology in the home of the
future is here, now, today. All-electronic homes can be put together with present
knowledge and hardware.
So why wait? About 70% of service technicians we've surveyed tell us they intend
to stay in the business. If you're one of these, the best opportunity of your life
is opening in front of you. If you get ready for it, if you think in terms of total
electronics, if you make sure you are trained to troubleshoot everything in a customer's
home - you can begin practicing as a total-home technician right now. Then, as technology
progresses, you'll already be oriented to the total-home concept of our electronic
future.
***
Electronics-Themed Comic
"Charles? Oh, he's working on that stupid closed circuit idea
of his down in the basement, as usual."
Page 85
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