Today I noticed a link on Google Books to this issue of Popular Science from October, 1970. It was fascinating to flip through a few pages. The first thing that struck me was the advertisements: cigarettes, cigars, pipes, guns, razors, and, of course, correspondence schools.
Anyway, this short article about a VideoDisc kind of blew my mind. It stored video at 25 fps on a record with a very fine groove. This is in 1970 — 7 years before VHS was first launched.
Googling a bit, I learned that it wasn’t truly brought to market until 1975, and a single disk would hold only 10 minutes to black-and-white video. TelDec eventually released a 12-disc changer, and even a 50 disc “jukebox” (in 1980).
Hmm, have you seen the RCA Selectavision discs / Capacitive Electronic Discs (CEDs)? The principle’s a bit different but they took it even further, and you can buy full (old) movies on ‘em.
Your mention of the PopSci article reminds me of an old book called “A Century of Wonders: 100 Years of Popular Science”. It was cool to see the breathless coverage of new technology and the sometimes wild predictions of how it’d revolutionize our lives.