This is the 14th in a24 - part serieslooking at every episode of The Jetsons TV show from the original 1962 - 63 season .
The fourteenth instalment of “ The Jetsons ” originally publicise in the U.S. on December 30 , 1962 , and was titled “ Test Pilot . ” This installment ( like so many others ) center around the contender between Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs . Both companies have developed an invincibility suit which can supposedly withstand anything from mammoth sawblades to missiles being give notice directly at it . The only trouble is that neither Mr. Spacely nor Mr. Cogswell can discover any person brave enough ( or dumb enough ) to do as a human guinea pig and test the suit ’s ability to keep its wearer dependable .
George goes to the doctor for an insurance physical and gets some bad news . George live with a Peek - A - hiss Prober Capsule which travels around the inside of his physical structure show the Dr. ( in a rather humorous path , of course ) how George ’s various organs are hold up . “ You just swallow it and it transmits pictures to a television silver screen , ” the doctor explains . Through a series of mix - ups the Dr. diagnoses George as having very little time to live . George then takes “ live each day as if it were your last ” quite literally and begins making hasty decisions — give his family money to expend frivolously and telling off his boss , Mr. Spacely .
Mr. Spacely realizes that George ’s newfound braveness may be just what he require to test out the invincibility suit . Mr. Cogswell essay to poach the newly heroic Jetson for his company since he ’s had no more lot than Mr. Spacely in detect a test pilot . Mr. Spacely wins out and George goes on testing the suit of clothes without a care in the Earth , acting rather calm for a adult male who believes that he ’ll presently be six foot under . ( Or six foot over ? I do n’t imagine “ The Jetsons ” ever turn to if people of the twenty-first century are buried or cremated or tear into space or something . )
After many death - defying test , George discovers that the diagnosis was incorrect and that he ’s not going to die . George then reverts back to the lovable coward he always was and does his good to get out of the last mental testing which just so take place to involve two missiles being inject at him . In the end , it was n’t the projectile or the sawblades that destroyed the suit , but the washing political machine — and George remarks that they should have include a “ juiceless - clean only ” tag .
The 1950s was an exciting decade for medicine with many crucial innovations — from Salk ’s polio vaccinum to the first harmonium transplant . These incredible advancements led many to consider that such marvellous medical discoveries would continue at an even more accelerated charge per unit into the 21st hundred , include in how to diagnosis unlike diseases .
As Dr. Kunio Doi explains in his 2006 paper “ Diagnostic Imaging Over the Last 50 Years ” the scientific discipline of seeing inside the human body has developed tremendously since the fifties . The biggest hurdle in diagnostic imagination at mid - century was the manual processing of flick which could be time waste :
[ In the 1950s ] most diagnostic look-alike were obtained by use of screen - plastic film system and a high - voltage x - ray author for conventional projection x - re imagery [ … ] . Most radiographs were hold by manual processing of films in darkrooms [ … ] , but some of the major hospitals began to use automated pic processors . The first automated film processor [ … ] was a large mechanically skillful system with film hangers , which was designed to replace the manual mental process of picture show development ; it was very bulky , requiring a large space , and occupy about 40 min to work on a film .
The January 17 , 1960 edition of the Sunday comical cartoon strip Our New Age byAthelstan Spilhausoffered an affirmative look at the medical diagnostic instruments of the hereafter :
The strip explains that one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. patients might step into an “ testing booth ” while outfitted with a courting that measures all kinds of things at once — your bosom rate , blood pressing , breathing and so on . This suit will , of course , be connected to a computer which will spit out data to be analyze by a MD . The prescription drug will then be “ automatically ” print out for the patient .
Just as we see with George Jetson , “ automatic ” diagnosing in this comical strip from 1960 does n’t mean that humanity will be taken wholly out of the picture . Doctors of the futurity , we were told , will still play a vital use in break down information and doubly - checking the computer ’s diagnosing . As Dr. Doi notes in his paper , we ’ve made terrific footstep in the last 50 year of diagnosing . But I suppose we ’re still wait on that invincibility suit .
This post originally come out atSmithsonian.com .
jetsonsMedicine
Daily Newsletter
Get the good technical school , skill , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
