Arthur Radebaugh ( 1906 - 1974 ) was bear in Coldwater , Michigan and would eventually establish his homebase in Detroit — though he spend much of his meter in the previous fifties and 60 wandering the nation in hisFord Thames , which had been converted to house a mobile art studio apartment . Radebaugh briefly attended the Chicago Art Institute in 1925 but dropped out and pass the later 1920s working as a omnibus driver , hotel shop clerk and a field usher . He move back to Michigan in the thirties and work as a sign painter . He married his wife Nancy in 1934 and begin to get illustration work for magazine like Esquire . During World War II Radebaugh designed armored cars and artillery for the Army . After the war , Radebaugh went to Detroit where he was Chief of the Army ’s Industrial Design Branch and afterwards went on to play as a designer for companies like Chrysler , Bohn and Coca - Cola .
Radebaugh ’s Sunday comic slip Closer Than We Think was syndicate in the United States and Canada and run for five years . The strip debut January 12 , 1958 with “ Satellite Space Station ” and ended on January 13 , 1963 with a dialog box about the “ Family Computer . ” The strip show get to about 19 million newspaper lector at its peak and ease up people a aspect at some of the most toppingly techno - utopian visions that America had to offer . In the May 5 , 1958 version of the airstrip , Radebaugh looked at the “ energy - push button school day ” of tomorrow , with computer console as every child ’s desk . The February 1 , 1959 strip imagined theelectronic house library of the time to come , with microfilm projections on the wall . The April 9 , 1961 edition of the strip showed thefactory farmof tomorrow . And the October 4 , 1958 strip predictedjetpack mailmenhopping from planetary house to house in Suburbatopia .
Radebaugh get laid experiment with different culture medium , including airbrush and fluorescent key . The May 2 , 1947 Portsmouth Times ( Portsmouth , Ohio ) course a piece that look at the work he was doing in the tardy 1940s when he was Chief of the Army ’s Industrial Design Branch .
Radebaugh , whose studio apartment are in Detroit , Mich. , helped project armored auto , bazookas and artillery unit for the Army . Now , as an spectacular designer of futurist life , he conceives squirt - propelled space ships ; heli - cruiser for Sunday driver ; aerodynamic overhead tramways carrying car made from extra Army aircraft fuselages . He paints most of these inventive themes conventionally , then trade out the steady lights in his studio , turns on a ultra - violet beam , and adds his fluorescent pigment . illumine by the invisible rays of the extremist - purple luminance , windowpane blaze sluttish , stacks erupt sess .
Arthur Radebaugh croak in a Veteran ’s Hospital in Grand Rapids , Michigan on January 17 , 1974 . At the prison term of his death , his consistence of work in magazines and newspapers had been largely blank out . But through the help of some very dedicated people online , admit Tom Z. , who has kindly provide many of the close Than We retrieve comic strips I ’ve boast on Paleofuture over the years , Radebaugh has hopefully find a young hearing to inspire .
This post originally appear atSmithsonian.com .
1950sAdvertisingarthur radebaugh
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