A surprisingly accurate description of modern smartphones was found in a 1953 newspaper

The first smartphone is considered to be the IBM Simon. The gadget, released in 1994, combined the functions of a telephone and a personal computer and allowed, for example, to send and receive faxes. But "the first of the newest" can be called rather the iPhone: a revolutionary device with a touch screen and without a keyboard, Steve Jobs presented on January 9, 2007.

Such a gadget was described in 1953 by Mark Sullivan, head of the American telephone company Pacific Tel and Tel. Open Culture journalists found in the Tacoma News Tribune, in which Sullivan shared his vision for the future:

If you think about it, then this forecast has already come true. 54 years before the original iPhone was unveiled, Sullivan predicted a portable touchscreen phone. screen (no keyboard or rotary dial), and the launch of FaceTime video chat - 57 years before debut. He also foresaw the emergence of a voice translation function - such capabilities were added to audio chats only a few years ago.

Sullivan was born in 1896 and died at the age of 89, in 1985. Just two years before his death, the legendary "nutcracker" was released Motorola DynaTAC 8000X - the first commercial portable telephone.

By the way, the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1964 to some extent clarified Sullivan's forecast. In an article for The New York Times, he notedthat in the future communication devices will make it possible to "see and hear the person you are calling." Azimov added that "the screen [will] be used not only to see the people you call, but also to study documents and photographs and read excerpts from books."