Hugo Gernsback may have been America’s first professional futurist, and while he wasn’t always right he was always interesting. Gernsback invented the first home radio kits right after the turn of the nineteenth century and sold his gadgets by mail order from his Brooklyn offices. He loved science fiction as much as science–saw them as complements, really–and published some of the earliest examples of the form in his publications, including Amazing Stories. The sci-fi Hugo Award is named for him.

Gernsback never stopped trying to amaze with outlandish inventions and predictions. Just four years before his death, the July 26, 1963 issue of Life profiled the man in “Barnum of the Space Age,” which reported his prophecies for the future. An excerpt:

A Hugo Gernsback print advertisement.

“Science is now so big, so flamboyant and so barnacled with politicians, press agents, generals and industrialists that Hugo Gernsback, who invented it back in 1908 (and has re-invented it, annually, since) can scarcely make himself heard above the babble of the late-comers. Although he is now 78, Gernsback is still a man of remarkable energy who raps out forecasts of future scientific wonders with the rapidity of a disintegrate gun. He believes that millions will eventually wear television eyeglasses–and has begun work on a model to speed the day. ‘Instant newspapers’ will be printed in U.S. homes by electromagnetic waves, in his opinion as soon as U.S. publishers wrench themselves out of the pit of stagnant thinking in which Gernsback feels they are wallowing at present. He also believes in the inevitability of teleportation–i.e., reproducing a ham sandwich at a distance by electronic means, much as images are now reproduced on a television screen.”