Update: We just got a comment from RAND External Communications, letting us know that this picture is a hoax, and actually is not real, but just a slightly manipulated picture of a submarine at the Smithonian Institution. For more information please visit here. I’ll try to be more careful with checking things out next time.

Here is a very interesting picture, from a 1954 Popular Mechanics Magazine, a prediction of what a home computer will look like in the year 2004. It looks more like what a “museum-computer”, not a “home-computer” looked like in 2004:-)

The caption underneath the picture reads thus:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible fro the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.