Of urban legends and seeing the future

This picture has done the rounds as an actual mockup of what one corporation envisaged in 1954 how a home computer might look in 1994.

Have a laugh, but it is actually an urban legend, which is explained nicely in the Urban Legends Reference Pages of snopes.com a cool sight to check out those pesky stories you are asked to forward to everyone in your address book or someone will die, lose their house, husband, dog, or a zillion bad things will happen to you. I got to thinking about urban legends again this weekend after seeing yet another one arrive, having been forwarded to me in a list of dozens of others. Don't you wish some people would just think for a couple of minutes before hitting the forward button?

From snopes.com ... This picture displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a "home computer" might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn't, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype "home computer." The picture is actually an entry submitted to a Fark.com image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television (as well as to add the gray-suited man to the left-hand side of the photo).