Original subtitles

By

In the early days, ie,

before nineteen nineteen hundred and thirty,

There was a lot of skepticism.

Today, most scientists take me seriously. scientists take me seriously.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that.

This is Hugo Gernsback.

Some of you may know him as this know him as this guy,

seen here predicting the future.

Some of the things he saw coming saw coming include Skype,

interactive television, drones,

online dating, space mining,

social networks, silent disco, and, of course, jetpacks.

My grandfather was a... he was a seer.

I mean, he was able to to predict the future.

By

He was an inventor.

You know, he invented some things that...

that never went anywhere.

Like this flying car.

Or the orchestra of smells.

And whatever this is.

He was a publisher, a very prolific publisher.

It basically defined the pulp era.

I publish the latest science fiction news,

as silly and crazy as it may crazy as it may seem,

because sooner or later, it will come true.

By

And it attracted a young audience

that was destined to change the world.

By

Gernsback was the founding of science fiction,

and in fact he coined the term.

Although some would would call it the greatest

Science fiction nightmare.

Hugo Gernsback really lost in history.

And it is a pity that

has been forgotten in this regard,

because I was trying to something quite significant.

As you can see,

there are some explanations to be given.

So let's tune in to the life of Hugo Gernsback.

The first stop, a small country country called Luxembourg.

Our story begins with a gift.

The year is 1890.

For reference, this is the year in which

Luxembourg has its first Grand Duke,

the folding carton folding cardboard box was invented,

Idaho and Wyoming become

states, and this is what a computer looks like in 1890. computer looks like in 1890.

On August 16, Hugo celebrates celebrates his sixth birthday.

At this moment it is still is called Gernsbacher,

and she has finally hair has finally grown, since

was almost completely bald until he was bald until he was five years old.

But we digress.

An electrician hands you a box with the box with the following contents.

An old, leclanché, drummer

wet, some cable, and electric bell.

Connecting the components fills you with

joy, that more than 60 years later,

I would still remember how the vision of the

green spark from the bell switch

excited him more than anything else since then. than anything else since.

The vision of the green spark of the

bell switch excited me

more than anything else since then. since then.

This spark literally ignited me in

electrical things, and I could never forget

this particular day in my entire life.

I was very young when...

he, well, he decided that...

he was interested in... in electricity and science.

I wanted to be the next Thomas Edison, already

you know, to manufacture new machines that

would change the world and and make him rich and famous.

Once he had that in mind,

that was the path I was going to take.

I think he was pretty courageous about it.

But sacrifices must be made,

and decides that the school can wait.

Its only impressive results impressive would be the number of

of absences from class.

I would never complete any study,

or receive a diploma.

By

by

Hugo Gernsback clearly had a privileged upbringing.

His father was a wine merchant who was

had moved to Luxembourg before his birth.

And he was running a successful business,

then the family was quite wealthy.

This kind of idea of creating things.

And developing things,

I was quite free to do so. freedom to do so.

His father encouraged him.

He did not introduce him to the wine business,

So Gernsback was really alone.

With few friends and two much much older brothers,

one of whom died tragically when Hugo was only six years old. when Hugo was only six years old,

is a loner.

By

He was a great admirer of Mark Twain.

And when he wrote his first novel, he signed it "Huck Gernsbacher."

as a tribute to the author of Huckleberry Finn.

The novel is about an unfortunate child.

Who keeps getting into trouble,

and then use science to get out of the problem.

It remains unpublished to this day.

As a child, he managed to locked himself in a cellar,

and I needed to find a way out of that basement.

And this is where his creative ideas creative ideas,

because he happened to have some batteries with him.

By

I'm not sure what his father thought about it.

But because he used his scientific his scientific techniques,

was able to get out of the basement.

Many of the stories we receive about their

life are a kind of self-propagated of self-propagated myths.

There are stories he told about

over and over again, until

that it was the only story that

we had about who he was and where he who he was and where he came from.

During these years, the

isolation of young Hugo did not

is not only social, but also geographical.

The family moved from the city center to

the then underdeveloped underdeveloped Bourbon Plateau.

The only buildings are

the Gernsbacher estate and a convent.

Somehow he manages to to make friends with the nuns.

And offers to install a buzzer system,

that they accept, but only after obtaining

special permission from the Pope

to allow the child to access to their more private rooms.

With the product of your trade,

he sets up a laboratory

in the attic of the Gernsbacher's of the Gernsbacher family.

By

At the age of 17 he composed this patriotic march

playing in the background, but soon decides

than a musical career

would only stand in the way to becoming an inventor.

By

Hugo's growing ambitions

will soon take him beyond the small borders of his the small borders of his native country.

While the Luxembourgers have

their own priorities,

Hugo begins studies electrical engineering

in Germany.

Returns a year early, again without a title.

But it brings back a new type of new type of battery,

that he developed there.

Try to patent it,

but your application is rejected.

I wanted to be in control.

I wanted to be able to succeed.

And I think he wanted to,

always projects an image of... self-confidence, self-confidence.

By

The Luxembourgers are, of course, world are, of course, world famous.

For taking three steps forward and forward and two backward.

For an analytical analytical mind like Hugo's,

take five steps to advance one step

Naturally, it will not work.

And then his father dies.

By

That same night,

the rabbi summoned to comfort the grieving family

drops dead on his way home.

This cursed episode causes the whole family scattered.

The mother returns to Germany,

Brother Sidney makes a fateful trip to Belgium.

And for Hugo, the choice is obvious.

There is also a name that has to be

It is also invoked at this point, which is Edison.

You know, he's going to the country of Thomas Edison.

By

by

by

When Gernsback stepped off the steamer,

He wrote this character of Huck Gernsback,

for him to be, like, super American.

I think he felt he could I could conquer the United States

United States being better at being American than...

than the Americans.

He really was something of a character.

I wanted to project, um, I think, a

air of mystery about himself.

It is in February 1904 that

Hugo settles in New York.

He is now 19 years old.

This is the year in which the city opens its first

subway line and Madison Square Garden Square Garden hosts

the first large-scale large-scale bodybuilding competition.

Surprising as it may seem, bodybuilding will actually play

a key role later in this story. later in this story.

By

This is 1904.

The United States continues to be a kind of a rather coarse, crude, rough-and-tumble country.

but very inventive, a vibrant society vibrant society, a very vibrant culture,

but it is still difficult at the edges.

By

Before delving into Gernsback's Gernsback's new home,

let's take a quick detour

and recalls the drum kit he developed

during his brief Germany.

This is a bit technical. But bear with me.

This is one of the most most interesting artifacts.

Held here at Syracuse Syracuse University

Special Collections Research Center.

We think it is,

one of the first batteries designed by Hugo Gernsback.

When I was still in Europe,

had an elaborate design

for a new type of dry cell dry cell battery.

What was different about it?

It is that the batteries at that time....

Gernsback finally obtains the patent

was rejected in Europe, but his career in

the battery business business would be short.

In a curious incident, he succeeds in convincing a manufacturer

to hire him as head of research... as head of research...

I said go away!

But he is fired just hours after hours after

start working when the owner believes

mistakenly that it is spying for spying for the competition.

He decides to become self-employed, but but, because of the

Unfortunately, he quickly discovers that, in

In reality, he is not of the same caliber as his hero, Edison. caliber as his hero, Edison.

He liked to show off, but was not at the same level

because he simply did not had the practical skills

to implement their ideas.

I believe that one of the true strokes of genius

of Gernsback was realization that the

science was not just something something that was done in

laboratories by specialists, who also

were doing, you know, teenagers in their basements and garages.

When it [started], there was little or

no material available for

experimenters in the U.S.

Since the death of his father father, Hugo's brother,

Sidney, has been busy to set up a business

wholesaler of electricity and chemical products in Brussels.

At my instigation, we founded the company

importer of electronic electronic products, which

imported all kinds of material from material from Europe.

The things he was selling were very

affordable, and even if you were alone

a guy in your room, you can

imagine that there were other types

lonely people all over the world who

were as excited as you were about what you were doing. as you were about what you were doing.

And so, Hugo, without knowing it, is sowing the seeds of the

the seeds of his future future publishing empire.

What makes the catalog of catalog of companies

importers of electronic electronic products be it

particularly interesting is that it is the type of core that

all its other magazines grow.

I knew that people wouldn't just be,

you know, flipping through their catalog dispassionately.

They would become obsessed.

People built their own radios.

People were interested in the way the way in which the amateurs were becoming

interested in computers in the computers in the 1970s, and...

You know, who was Steve Jobs originally, but an amateur?

Who ends up founding Apple Computer?

By

by

Hugo excels in the construction of simple things.

With vague applications,

and let an army of army of enthusiasts

explore their potential.

By

by

Gernsback eventually

accumulates more than 80 patents,

but it is its design for a small one,

radio device that will soon be

to propel your career in a new direction.

Telimco is accredited by many people

as the first complete radio set

sold to the American public.

The Telimco type works.

It is easily disturbed by

electromagnetic signals from the office elevator,

and creates massive radio massive radio interference, but it is inexpensive.

Professional transmitters cost thousands of dollars,

and Gernsback sells Telimco

for a fraction of the cost,

which is exactly what would get him would get him in trouble again.

Began to advertise

this wireless transmitter transmitter for only $7.50,

and the office of the Mayor's Office

was flooded with complaints

of indignant people who were convinced

that this had to be a fraud.

/It would become one of Hugo's

favorite anecdotes of all time.

By

One day, a thick Irish policeman came in.

He said, "I'm going to clean you bastards up."

"What's the big idea of you phonies to sell

a wireless equipment and a receiver,

when you know very well that it cost $100,000

for one of these transmitting stations?"

Then we gave him the handset and told him:

Now you hold it and walk wherever you want.

Tell us how many times the bell in your hand the bell in your hand.

Call him six times.

Believe it or not, that's why.... That day was pretty good.

It rang six times.

One day I did it eight times,

but that day was pretty good.

Well, anyway, he scratched anyway, he scratched a

his head a little and looked at the assembly

from there, and in those days, For

make the decorations a little more

interesting, it had some very very nice wires.

You know, it looked a lot better.

And he looked at them and said, "I believe you are

a bunch of of fucking criminals.

What are these cables for?"

That outraged him, and should have,

because it meant that the policeman did not know

no science, I didn't know nothing about wireless radios.

Um, and I think you saw in that

interaction a kind of stubbornness.

American stupidity

I really wanted to conquer by popularizing popularizing science.

Gernsback would tell that story story as the point of

inflexion to undertake an epic quest for

educate the public about new technologies.

Which is convenient, because now

knows that it is better to talk about

technology than building new technology. new technology.

I think we have to remember, In

really, how mysterious the radio was.

The mechanical world, in a sense, the in a sense, the mechanical world

of Edison, the phonograph of the phonograph, the light bulb

that shines, i.e. has a tangible a tangible presence.

While the radio,

I don't know, where does it come from?

You know, why can I receive this message?

Where do these voices come from?

Where is this invisible invisible ballroom of the ether

that somehow [I can hear but cannot access?

So you have to imagine this young Hugo Gernsback.

Walking in New York, coming from Luxembourg.

He goes to all these department stores with

your Telimco and shows them to and shows them to the sellers.

And it is somewhat surprising that he was able to

selling the idea to people without

had any kind of conceptual conceptual framework

to even understand what it was that

was making this kind of magical looking box.

Gernsback spends the next following years to explore

options to reach a wider a wider audience.

The breakthrough occurred in 1908.

Henry Ford is starting production of the historic Model T.

The first fully animated fully animated film is made.

And in 1908 also died the

first person in a plane crash.

Despite lacking experience in

actual publications, Gernsback decides that

needs a magazine to spread its message.

The EICO catalog, of course, is made

paper and has pages, so that will do the trick.

While magazines such as

Scientific American published

articles on new developments

Gernsback went much further.

And he decided that he would publish much more speculative articles.

One of my favorite issues of the first magazines of

Gernsback is the April 1911 issue of April 1911 issue of Modern Electrics.

There is a design there for a kind of a team of

portable wireless telegraph he had built himself.

And if you go back three pages, you will have the

first delivery of the Ralph 124C 41+ from Gernsback.

May I interrupt and say that this is a play on words?

When you talk about it, you would say:

"Ralph, one to foresee for another".

That it is one of the first works of the

modern American American science fiction.

He always wanted to be a writer.

Perhaps that was secondary to wanting to

inventor, but that was one of his ambitions. was one of his ambitions.

And of course he comes up with this comes up with this story,

Ralph 124C 41+, improvised from scratch,

Let's face it, from other science fiction writings.

Yes, try to rewrite rewrite a

novel with, shall we say, mixed success.

The first major contribution contribution he made to the

science fiction was his own short novel,

Ralph 124C 41, which is frankly a terrible novel.

I mean, it's barely legible by today's standards.

But as a catalog of amazing predictions

or speculation, worked very well.

The story revolves around a lone inventor.

In the year 2660.

By

is an entertaining story

of a rather standard type.

It is full of suggestions of fantastic new ideas.

The most famous is his schematic explanation.

From an early form of radar.

But it is an incredibly dry read.

It is not something that...

just, you know, a pleasure to open it

Ralph and read carefully,

but they read almost as if they were one more

of its editorials on future technologies. technologies of the future.

You know, in the United States United States there was this whole wave of

of what they called a sort of phantom airships.

People were watching aircraft,

and they would say that they can see men

handling flyers and looking through telescopes. looking through telescopes.

They are almost like the first flying saucer scare.

They were these phantom aircraft.

But it indicates a restless for something new.

So I think Gernsback really

was right because I believe that people that the people who

were building the radios were the

who wanted to tune in the future. And he got them.

I think science fiction has always has always been based on a crowd,

a group of people who were were the first to adopt the

people who like to see how things work. like to see how things work.

There is horrible exposition in many novels by

science fiction that are simply lists of

how a given imaginary technology technology works.

Because for that reader, they love it.

They love to know how it works.

And so I think there is an inherent curiosity.

There is a desire to know.

I like to defend like to defend Ralph.

As a real and living character.

Um, he is considered a sort of a cardboard character.

That it is only a device for scientific lectures.

A socially awkward person

trying to strike up a conversation with a beautiful woman

He might find that there is nothing for him.

Talk except for science.

"Now that we are on a date, Alice,

let me talk to you for two hours

about this wonderful new new solar power plant.

So in that way, I think Ralph is a real person,

and perhaps a real person similar to Gernsback himself.

This, by the way, is Rose.

They were married in 1906.

Since the publication of the first first installment of Ralph,

Letters have been arriving from professional inventors,

teenagers who seeking to learn more,

and people who are simply are interested

in alien civilizations.

Hugo realizes that he has discovered something.

It needs a new magazine.

It is now the year 1913, which, by the way, is a good

year for people who crash who crash in airplanes,

as he sees the first pilot first pilot out of an airplane

and parachute to safety. parachute to safety.

Radio is a new industry new industry, it provides

a pathway to the middle the middle class, for the

upper working class and the lower middle class.

It also brings immigrants.

It is a very common immigrant immigrants' literature.

This is often invisible to modern readers,

but many of the earliest writers writers are immigrants

Irish, German immigrants, Jewish immigrants.

Then you can feel the interest

for social mobility in the literature.

Hugo begins to publish not only the

letters it receives, but also the

names and addresses of the senders.

The surrounding material, and here it is

where Gernsback is crucial, the

editorials, the letters page, the

is absolutely about making connections between people.

This did not happen simply because simply because most of the

magazines did not have that format at the time. letter format at that time.

He made that happen.

At first it was probably just a marketing idea. marketing idea.

I doubt he thought, "I'm going to

inventing the first social network."

It's more like, "I'm going to sell

many more of these radios.

And what that allowed the radio amateurs to do was

contact each other without contact each other without going through Gernsback.

And that was brilliant.

What he developed were

communities that were very empowering.

They can obtain a different type of

charisma in an almost alternative reality.

They would become your identification letters, of the

same way that today people become people become his avatar,

your Twitter ID, or your Instagram account.

These people were mostly

outsiders who were as outsiders.

And it meant that from the beginning there was

a spirit of acceptance of the stranger.

I did a lot to help the

radio amateurs and awaken them to their opportunities.

That earned me the name name of father of the

wireless technology for amateurs wireless technology for amateurs in those days.

Technology is a form of form of empowerment.

Technology is a way in which the

weak can become really strong.

You don't have to be handsome,

you don't have to be strong.

You become a hero by

to build something wonderful.

One of these heroes is Gladys

Kathleen Parkin, 15, with the

wireless device that she built herself.

She was the youngest and one of the and one of the first successful applicants for a

U.S. visa. License government-issued radio license.

I was really looking for that everyone, but

particularly the youth of the

will help to create the future.

And people imagined imagined themselves

as young Edison or young Teslas.

Hello.

It's about time we we mention it.

So let's go off on a a bit of a tangent about

Gernsback's strange friendship Gernsback's strange friendship with Nikola Tesla.

I remember when I was quite young, such a

I was 8 years old or so, and I was going to the

my grandfather's office, and there my mother

pointed out Tesla's Tesla's death mask.

I remember being perplexed,

because I could not imagine

why anyone would do such a thing.

This was something my grandfather

decided to do immediately.

As soon as he learned learned of the death

Tesla, arranged for this to be done.

My grandfather's relationship with

Tesla was very important to him.

Both were

immigrants, um, both inventors.

He was literally spellbound by Tesla.

Narrator These are just just some of the

ways in which the fanatic Hugo describes Tesla.

Extremely meticulous, well-dressed,

culinary expert and gourmet expert.

Able to quote great literature

in several languages with precision.

Shortly after their first meeting meeting, Hugo starts to get annoying.

Tesla to convince him to write

his autobiography for The Electrical Experimenter.

Tesla reluctantly accepts, but accompanies each delivery

with endless delays, curses and tantrums to

as writing progressively gets in the way of progressively in the way of

of his invention.

After only six deliveries deliveries out of a total planned

24, Tesla abruptly abandons abruptly abandons the project.

The reason?

A misplaced comma in the printed edition.

Tesla is starting to deal with

something that will become more important

as the 20th century progressed,

which is, if you will, the power

invisible, invisible energies.

In a way, it's like the anti-Edison.

So, if we examine the logo that

Gernsback has in his first publications,

it always occurred to me that it looked a lot like

a kind of modernist and very modernist and very

stylized torch of the Statue of the Statue of Liberty.

And I think that, in a way, Gernsback has

reworked in this type of pulsation, radiant globe.

It makes me think of some of the devices

of Tesla and in these incredible types of

conductors of electricity through space.

At a fundamental level, both are

idealists, both are utopian thinkers.

My grandfather was fascinated with the Tesla process.

It is said that Tesla had eidetic images.

He was able to conceptualize and and visualize very clearly

anything I could think of.

It is a very lucid type of image.

Some people have it when they have it when they dream.

My grandfather was a psychic.

He predicted things. How did he do that?

I think they went to him a lot. You know,

during sleep, during the time I was dreaming. time I was dreaming.

And I think this could have happened have happened in part to Tesla.

By

When Tesla lost everything,

every year during the vacations,

he would come to the office

and my grandfather gave him money.

(Narrator) In 1920, mainstream America discovers radio. America discovers radio.

The first commercial radio stations commercial radio stations

in Detroit and Pittsburgh,

and westinghouse Corporation

begins to sell the first national radios in national radios in stores,

15 years after Hugo sold his first Telimco set sold his first Telimco set.

Not to be left behind, Gernsback does what you think

Gernsback would serve.

Create your own radio station radio station, WRNY.

But first, meet Dorothy.

They married in 1921.

WRNY was a kind of short-lived short-lived experiment

duration that Gernsback had, and there was a lot of

interesting things they were working on there. they were working on there.

They built one of the

first keyboards

electrical, called Pianorad.

For the electronic music electronic music fans among you

you may be interested to know that a certain Robert Moog started his

career building theremins after purchasing the

DIY instructions from one of Gernsback's from one of Gernsback's latest magazines.

To be a pioneer in radio and electronic music,

of course, is not enough for Hugo.

The latest experimental technological fad in the 1920s is television.

WRNY began to make one of the

first television television

we have on record, I believe, in 1925.

The image transmitted has

approximately the the size of a postage stamp.

It would be another 30 years before before only half of the U.S.

Households would even would even have a television.

I wanted to educate the masses by

all possible means:

writing articles,

selling material for

experience, through radio and radio and television...

That was his vocation: To be

preacher of science.

If he were alive today, he would be in

Internet and social social networks.

It is easy to imagine how you would use any

available platform to deliver his sermon.

I want to reject the feeling of

Gernsback as a prophet, which is

important and should be remembered today

because he predicted radar or predicted the advent of television.

I think it is important because it taught the

people to think about these things of the future.

And people's hunger for the future is growing.

More and more readers are flocking to their magazines.

For speculative stories, the rarer, the better.

Hugo complies with the the demands of its readers

and start new magazines.

Given the large number of of strange ideas

published by Gernsback, he occasionally ends up

with a functional invention along the way, almost by accident. almost by accident.

He came up with a way to hearing through the teeth,

that you put this device in your mouth in your mouth and bit it

and the vibrations that generated through

the amplifier would through your teeth.

Uh... It was never commercially released.

I believe that was true for many of his inventions.

In fact, the same technology the same technology.

In the ephemeral Google Glass.

There is a kind of bone conduction piece.

On the arm of the glasses he wears

exactly the same principle that Gernsback was Gernsback was working with.

Um, but the idea originally came up in this Gernsback story

He wrote about the Martians.

By

When a visitor goes to Mars, this person realizes

who did not listen with their ears,

were listening with their brains.

He was a guy who had a thousand ideas.

I mean, it doesn't form not even half of an idea

before it is already available as a commodity.

And that is something that is so

charming about him and his universe.

This is called teleportation.

Teleport?

- Transportation. - Transportation.

Teleportation.

Either way you want to do it.

And very often it was exposed to the

ridiculous, as freethinkers do.

It is a prototype of what we we would think of today.

As a modifier, taking components, elements already

existing, um, hacking them and mixing them in a way

that creates an interesting ideal that has conceptual value. that has conceptual value.

It is in this spirit of hacking and mixing that

Gernsback suddenly an idea suddenly occurs to him.

On a hot July day in 1923, While

builds one of his gadgets in his pleasant

air-conditioned living room, try to imagine how

would be a magazine entirely devoted to science fiction.

The following month, El special fiction issue

Science and Invention's scientific Invention hits the newsstands.

The response from response from readers is lukewarm, but

even so, register the trademark of a magazine

with the elegant name of Scientifiction.

But it fails to to get enough

subscribers even to launch the to launch the magazine.

Not that the title helped.

For another two and a half years and a half of agitation,

Gernsback is still looking for a way to

market their amazing amazing stories of the future.

And there it is.

Without prior notice and without prior publicity,

decides, on its own, that in 1926, the United States

Unidos is ready for for amazing stories.

By

Suddenly it appears Amazing Stories,

and the whole game changes.

There was a kind of of instinctive genius

about amazing stories, particularly that year.

If we look at 1926, this is the year

when Fritz Lang's Metropolis Metropolis by Fritz Lang is screened for the first time.

A film that really

The American public found it indigestible.

By

He is giving the American imagination.

Something you want.

It's... It's instantaneous. It's flashy, it's fast,

it's colorful, and it's very sexy.

These are tropes that suddenly resonate

with the people at the time, and move the reader

not just say that these are going to be are going to be great adventures,

because you could have great adventures adventures in the Wild West,

You could have great adventures as cops and robbers.

On the streets of New York, but great adventures

with the mind, great adventures engineering adventures,

Great adventures with technology.

By

Then in the magazines,

we see people creating a language,

all of which is highly highly experimental.

Gernsback creates a platform for

this, but that means means that some

of the things it publishes are garbage.

In addition, we are facing a generation of writers

who are not science fiction writers as such. science fiction writers as such.

Gernsback failed to attract pulp writers

to write for the Amazing to write for Amazing

Stories because it didn't pay them well enough. paid them well enough.

It is fascinating to read the

magazines he compiled.

They are, in a sense, everything that gives

bad reputation to science fiction.

We looked at it today, and yes, there is casual sexism and

some notable racism in some of these stories. some of these stories.

We can look at that and recognize it as

cultural artifacts, which is

reflecting their time in some way, could not pass.

But there are times when it does.

There are times when that you receive stories that

make you look beyond cultural stereotypes. cultural stereotypes.

Science fiction magazines fiction magazines actually start

during one of the great waves of feminism of feminism in the United States.

There are female doctors in the early days of science fiction.

There are women lawyers in science

early fiction, presidents.

But I found a fascinating story fascinating story that actually

was about someone making the transition transitioning from one sex to the other.

The science fiction of the the 1920s and 1930s that

Gernsback helps promote is actually much more

socially radical than it has ever been given credit for. has ever been given credit for.

Immediately, there were people who

I thought, "No. This is not the guy, This is not the guy

of things I want my child to read.

And the children were smuggling Amazing stories in

and reading it attentively under bedding, I imagine.

It is under their respective sheets where

two teenagers called Jerry Siegel and

Joe Shuster are impressed by the

cover of the August 1928 1928 issue of Amazing Stories.

The illustration of a Doc's story

Smith called The lark of space

inspires them to create their own

superhero, a caped man in a cape named Superman.

This appears for the first first time in an issue of Amazing

Stories, which is also the first first edition that has

the first Buck Rogers story in the Rogers in the same issue.

Amazing stories The publication of the

first stories of Buck Rogers has such a success

which soon generates a direct competitor called Flash Gordon.

Some 40 years later, a young filmmaker would attempt to

to get the rights to that franchise franchise but is denied.

So he decides to write his own own epic space opera.

He calls it Star Wars.

What really sells Amazing

Stories are the revolutionary

Illustrator's covers Frank R. Pablo.

Their iconic designs in striking colors

capture the shopper's attention shopper's attention at the kiosks.

It is fair to say that Hugo had many

followers but not many friends.

Frank Paul was one of the few.

Born in 1884, the same year as Hugo,

in what was still was Austria-Hungary,

he is a fellow European immigrant.

By

Their collaboration lasts 49 years and produces

Nearly 1,000 designs that shape the look.

Science fiction for generations to come.

By

by

Paul comes up with floating skateboards,

planet-destroying lasers,

and spacecraft with a familiar shape.

I'm not sure if my grandfather

It could have been as successful success as it was without him.

The two of them, I can't think of them apart.

Paul dies in 1963.

In a rare public display of public display of emotion,

Hugo concludes the obituary to his friend

with the words: I miss him more than I want to admit.

Frank R. Paul is credited with is credited with the first

Color images of space space stations and satellites.

And probably even the oldest

representations of flying saucers,

three decades before a pilot named Kenneth named Kenneth Arnold takes off

The U.S. obsession with UFOs obsession with UFOs.

It has a tremendous effect on

the public's imagination.

He prepared the ground for what was to be a

enormous, enormous cultural cultural influence during the

1950s and 1960s. The flying saucer, the UFO.

The flying saucer, as

describes Arnold, the fascinating thing is

that does not make any noise, there is no

external propulsion signals external propulsion and does not produce smoke.

It is beyond the mechanics of the aircraft.

It is almost electric.

It's... It's similar to Tesla in the way it operates.

Again, we've...we've seen Gernsback starting something

and suddenly we have a real science fiction

fantasy that takes place in the skies the skies over the United States.

The legacy of this is actually much more much more complex,

subtle and unexpected than we might we could imagine

when we... when we come back and look at the first publications.

But it all starts with the idea that you can say

science through stories.

Amazing stories would go down in history.

As Gernsback's Gernsback's greatest success,

at least during the three the three short years it lasts.

Hugo's daughter Bernette Eugenia,

He was only three years old.

Within the following following six months,

would also lose its entire publishing business.

Remember that bodybuilding bodybuilding competition we mentioned

When Hugo arrives in New York 25 years ago?

One of its main promoters was promoters was Bernarr.

And that is not a typographical error.

He changed his name to sounded like the roar of a lion.

McFadden, a physical culture editor

and health magazines,

Well, he's been watching Hugo for some time now.

Among the many strange and strange branches

Gernsback's editorials, there is one

magazine called Your Body magazine that would be her undoing.

In short, for McFadden, Your Body is a

competitor and McFadden doesn't like competitors.

Its publishing house is in good financial health, but Hugo financial health, but Hugo

has its own priorities on how to spend the proceeds.

First, he pays himself a good himself a good salary.

Then he spends most of what's left on his TV station. of what's left in your television station.

It then falls behind on its debts to debts to distributors,

printers and paper suppliers.

All that's left for McFadden is to convince three

suppliers to declare bankruptcy and to declare it bankrupt and

court orders Gernsback to sell the to sell the company.

McFadden would pioneer in fake news with

the first tabloids called New York Graphic and

True Story, where the stories are stories are the opposite.

Attempts to start a religious cult called Cosmotarianism, based on

eugenics, the Bible, and nudism in rural New Jersey. in rural New Jersey.

And when that fails, he then runs for

president's agenda to deport to deport immigrants.

He does not get the Republican nomination.

When his daughter dies of an illness

McFadden is relieved.

His weakness was dishonoring the family.

Sounds a bit like a caricature of a caricature of a comic book villain?

Well, guess what?

A villain in a story that

appeared 11 years later in the

science fiction comics by

Gernsback's name is Eric MacFadden

and looks exactly like Bernarr McFadden.

Gernsback takes revenge when the hero of the

history uses his powers to ridicule to ridicule MacFadden.

But according to Hugo's grandchildren,

the subject would always remain taboo in the home.

In October 1929, the market for

values collapses and triggers the Great Depression.

Four months later, a young astronomer discovers astronomer discovers Pluto, which

unleashes a craze for interplanetary interplanetary fiction stories.

We are now in the year 1930.

Hugo is 46 years old.

Always the entrepreneur, takes advantage of the

spirit of the times and takes advantage of

wonderful stories and a fleet of new magazines.

And maybe it's worth saying worth saying that he didn't...

the first science fiction magazine first science fiction magazine.

Initiated the first five science fiction magazines.

But he discovers that can no longer use

your beloved Scientifiction of Scientifiction.

He thought it would be smart to protect that term with copyright.

And of course, when he lost control of the

company, the term rights went with that company. term rights went with that company.

It is in the first issue of Science Wonder Stories where

uses the term "Science fiction. For the first time.

In the mid-1930s, almost

everyone was talking about science fiction.

The United States is slowly slowly out of the Great Depression

and begins to discover all that Hugo has in store

preaching for 30 years.

Too late, there is water is left, friends.

The contest ends in exactly seven minutes and...

No one has ever cooked over a stove of

firewood by the light of a kerosene kerosene lamp.

Message from our time to theirs. to theirs.

And here we have, ladies and

gentlemen, approaching

greet them, under theirs.

This is America saying that the bad times are over.

You know, We're in the money again.

But it is an opportunity to

the public to go and visit and visit the future.

A whole new universe was being a whole new universe was being created.

It is at this point that the very nature of

science fiction is starting to change. beginning to change.

The growth of science fiction is

produced during the period in which people

struggled to survive during the Depression. during the Depression.

And so these golden visions of the future golden visions of the future.

And the future was this wonderful land

for which perhaps we could all fight for.

The type of businessmen optimistic of the years

20 gave way to the people people of the 1930s,

gave way to military and industrial military and industrial heroes,

I guess from the 1940s.

Technological development became the province.

From the military, of the corporation.

And so this idea that, by

playing with radio waves,

Somehow you could invent a time machine or something.

He began to lose more and more credibility.

Possibly the biggest change change: The ideological change.

In science fiction it would have been been around 1944 and 1945.

In the case of nuclear energy

or radiological fallout...

People living near potential potential targets,

such as military bases and chemical chemical plants, can be...

Science could be the enemy. be the enemy.

Gernsback had never thought of it that way.

Its purest, simplistic science fiction

had mutated into something quite different.

It was almost as if he was a Frankenstein's monster.

And he had lost control over it.

By

He really couldn't answer.

To this changing taste among readers.

By

In the 1950s he published Science fiction plus.

But even then he hadn't realized realized that the trend of the stories

science fiction films that followed his formula was over.

He was very, very committed to the

that their writers eventually

called the Gernsback deception, which

is that every aspect of science

fiction that he published in his magazines

had to be logical, and it had to be verifiable.

Everyone knew Gernsback, they all respected Gernsback.

Gernsback and none of them wanted to to write something like Gernsback.

Even the old Hugo's old trick of

founding a club no longer seems to work.

Something has changed.

He still sees science fiction as a tool. fiction as a tool.

To educate people about people about science.

But fandom has become an end in become an end in itself,

that endures to this day.

I believe that the enthusiasm

It's what sets science fiction fans apart. science fiction fans.

And they are passionately in love with, um,

whatever they are in love with they are in love with and

are, like true lovers, able to stand on the rooftops

and shout it out, sometimes quite literally.

And they wear T-shirts, and they get the tattoos,

because they are looking for other people

to share love with them.

By

because they loved being together

and talk and share experiences,

And I don't think Gernsback would would not have liked to do that.

The only time he went to a science fiction convention.

It was when he was named guest of honor.

And although the field would recognize it

as the father of of science fiction,

he prefers to be the...

father of wireless wireless technology.

By

Science fiction grows

moves out, and leaves his father behind.

By

The first time I ever saw Hugo Gernsback

or I really noticed him,

Do I remember seeing seen a photograph?

Of a man dressed in what looked like a wetsuit. what looked like a diving suit.

And it was a very strange suit,

with, like, eye slits, and a private air tank.

And I thought, My God, who is that?

You know, and it turned out to be

Gernsback in his insulating suit.

And before you ask,

yes, he actually builds one of these for himself.

The sounds easily overwhelmed him. easily overwhelmed him.

He would have to retire to his thinking room.

By

Once I started thinking about autism,

I started to go back in time.

To try to find autistic people

that may not have been recognized or diagnosed diagnosed at the time.

What I discovered not only was that autistic people

and people with autistic traits had been involved

in the computer industry from the beginning,

but before that they had been involved

in the amateur radio radio amateurs and also

had been avid science fiction readers.

And as he delved into the

history, I realized that the

only man who was in the

top of that pyramid was Hugo Gernsback.

Like Gernsback, the people who

often surrounded them misunderstood them.

They were considered unfriendly.

They were considered impassive, cold and insensitive.

We hear this repeatedly in Gernsback's descriptions.

Writer James Gunn said:

"I think it's a strange mix.

of salesmanship and personal reserve.

Autistic people who are not very good at

find out what they want to talk about the people around them

in a sense, it will rehearse

conversations plausible in advance.

I think Gernsback was doing the same thing.

I think the character Hugo Gernsback's character

was, in a sense, a scripted creation.

Seeing it at home, seeing it in the office, um,

he... he was more or more or less the same.

Um, he was formal.

I never really saw him let go.

He... seemed quite serious and reserved during... serious and reserved during...

during my lifetime.

By

This, by the way, is Maria.

They married in 1951.

At a time when most married couples stayed together married couples stayed together

throughout his life, Gernsback was divorced twice.

The search for the perfect partner

It has been occupying Hugo for most of his adult life. most of his adult life.

Your solution? Science, obviously.

Sexology was the first truly medical truly medical-based journal.

A... promote, information

about sex.

From Gernsback, the focus is again focused on

speculative content, and Sexology will soon be

becomes a beacon for sexual outsiders. sexual outsiders.

For the first time they find a

accessible publication that takes them seriously.

By I was a child when

I saw copies of the magazine.

It should have been a really sexy magazine, and it was....

really boring.

I mean, it was like if sexual matters

were treated as radioelectronic radio-electronic issues.

Which brings us to the

Hugo's method for

find a happy romance.

Scientific mating, or as we might call it today...

Computer dating, I mean,

There is another thing that predicted, in fact,

because he did it at a time when computers computers barely existed,

is barely coming to fruition. to fruition.

Computers, by the way,

have been quietly evolving quietly in the background

since we saw the back in 1890.

Here is that computer again from 1890,

and here is a computer of 71950.

1890, 1950.

They have grown a little.

Hugo's latest magazine, radioelectronics,

would outlive him until January 2003.

The final issue would be published as Poptronics,

97 years after the first electroimport catalog.

By

Radio-Electrónica stands out for publishing two articles

He is credited with launching the home computer revolution.

One is about the Mark-8 computer,

and the other on the so-called television typewriter.

This incites the rival, popular electronics,

which in turn evolved from Gernsback Radio News,

respond by publishing an article about the Altair 8800. article about the Altair 8800.

A man named Paul Allen would show him that

to his friend, a certain Bill Gates.

They decide to write programs for Altair and, for

to sell them, they found a company called Microsoft. company called Microsoft.

Reading Gernsback today is instructive for us

when we feel that the incursion incursion of the new media

in our lives is completely overwhelming. is completely overwhelming.

It was someone who came up with who came up with a

means to explain what happens when

new technologies emerge in our daily lives.

When the telephone first appeared first appeared more than 100 years ago,

There were many people who reported the phone

because it is mechanical.

We will no longer talk face to face face to face and we will neglect

to the people closest to us. close to us.

But then people got got used to the phone.

They began to use it and started

to say, wow, I like this.

We love the phone.

And with mobile, you can reach more people.

And with the Internet, not only you can reach 10, 20, but

that you can reach a billion million people on the Internet.

All these technologies exist, not only

during events that shake the world shake the world, but

also during the little ones, you know,

intimate, banal, Mundane moments of

our lives, when you are waiting you are waiting in the

hospital waiting room or when you wake up in the morning. when you wake up in the morning.

Our relationship is completely smooth

with these machines, with these devices.

The truth of the matter is that the

technology in in reality simply

validates existing behaviors and characteristics that already exist.

I don't believe for a second that all of a sudden

the whole world is in the in the clutches of the

of some kind of vast collective narcissism collective narcissism,

who need to take photographs of themselves

all the time.

These are the people who were already being reviewed

in mirrors and glass tables

long before the smartphone the smartphone came along.

They are moments, huge moments.

They are like massive cultural massive cultural car crashes,

you know, and whose result sometimes

You won't notice it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

We are human beings.

We are people who live in stories.

We communicate with stories.

And what did Gernsback do?

It was to say, here is a new human experience,

the world of science and science and technology,

and we can communicate it by telling it in stories,

wrapping stories around it, setting stories in it.

By

My time is approaching.

I have to get away,

So I just want to leave you with a few words about the future.

If you think you have had exciting days,

Much more exciting days more exciting days ahead.

Gernsback, um, he was so, I think,

It is intuitively connected and

instinctively with their time and

somehow happened with that time, and that's that time, and that is very sad.

It simply faded into the past.

So, although the Hugo Award bears his name

name, people tend not to think people tend not to think about it anymore.

In its Luxembourg

remember him as such.

Hugo Gernsback Street, one

secondary road little

used, without numbers and addresses.

A cinema that projects countless tropes of the

pop culture influenced by Gernsback, turns his back on it.

Hugo Gernsback also has no grave.

Horrified by the the idea of his body,

to be eaten by insects, it makes the

arrangements to be donated to Cornell University.

Faculty of Medicine after his death.

Donating your body to science science is the ultimate

sacrifice in terms of promotion of science.

This is the last thing I can do.

I am no longer here, but at

least you can learn something from me.

I will never be buried.

I don't like the idea.

I do not believe that anyone should be buried.

It is... it is a vain glorification of humanity

that doesn't have, in my book, has no reason to be.

So, if someone really wants to really wants to go

to heaven, I invented a system to do so.

After you're dead, you're going to

in a very nice spaceship, you will

coffin, the coffin is placed in a coffin.

away from the sun and you are launched into space.

And you can really go to heaven that way.

Frozen.

Hugo's body did not go to space space, but his name did.

In 1970, Astronomer Donald Menzel

name a crater of the moon with the

name of Gernsback, in gratitude

to Hugo's financial support and encouragement.

But there is no need to to take out your telescopes tonight.

Gernsback Crater is virtually invisible from Earth.

The gift he left us Gernsback is so vast

that, in reality, it is almost impossible impossible to see the end.

What Gernsback was to stimulate

the mind and encourage people to think

on what was the potential of science.

Gernsback devoted his entire

career to educate the public,

in science and technology,

because I wanted to empower them

to participate in these changes.

You can be part of it.

That's the first thing I tell the kids.

You don't have to be strong It doesn't make

you don't have to be beautiful, you just have to be

courageous and persistent. With love for science.

I believe there is great power in

scientific literacy.

We live in an era of what is now

called design fiction, which

means that you can design objects

of the future, or of a past

imaginary, or of a...

a parallel universe, or from another planet, and you can

build them, if you have the ability to connect an Arduino

and... and a cool looking ray gun... attractive-looking ray gun...

and show people people how they could

be really the future, and in a certain

way to prove it to you, is really significant.

It has a... a real purpose

didactic, which is to make the

people that the future is a destiny, the

future is a place you can change now. you can change now.

We have to boost education

scientific; otherwise, more and more Otherwise, more and more

people will be excluded, and we don't want that. excluded, and we don't want that.

We must be able to make sure that the

public understanding of nuclear energy,

understand the Internet, understands security,

understand all the things we are talking about today. we are talking about today.

But once we we understand the concepts

basic, then we have the we have the intense

debate that continues, and that debate

continues forever, and wisdom comes from there.

Respect for scientific scientific authority,

respect for virtually any

type of authority, in fact, the respect

by the facts themselves, has actually decreased.

That would have outraged Gernsback.

He saw science as something that transcended,

in a way, the filth of the

human affairs and provided a clear guiding light.

Through the sea of life, and through the chaos of life.

And then the idea that someone would simply discard

the science of climate change,

or simply discard the science of autism,

for that matter, would have outraged him.

We need Gernsback now

to restore the public's faith, confidence and hope in science.

I think it will be another another few hundred years.

Before we see how important important it really was.

You know, he... he has to mythologize himself before he can do it,

you know, integrate into our history of civilization.

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