Legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite takes a glowing look at the future in The 21st Century, a regular half-hour documentary program on CBS. Every Sunday night, viewers in the late 1960s were treated to all the exciting technological advances they expected to see for the next 30 or 40 years, and on March 12, 1967, the episode gave a glimpse of a 21st-century home complete with 3-D television, on-demand ordering, videophones, inflatable furniture, a satellite newspaper delivery, and robot servants.

Exterior of the House of the Future (1967) (CBS)

Cronkite spends the first five minutes of the show mocking the evils of urban sprawl, insisting that everyone dreams of a secluded house on a few acres of land. Cronkite and his interviewee, Philip Johnson, insist that moving back to ever-denser cities is the wave of the future. Interestingly, Cronkite had to spin before he could show us tomorrow's independent homes. It will be a second home, Cronkite tells us, a far cry from the high-density reality that everyone will have to face in the 21st century:

Let's push our imaginations forward and visit a 21st century home. It could be someone's second home, hundreds of miles from the nearest city. It consists of a set of prefabricated modules. This home is as self-sufficient as a space capsule. It recycles its own water supply and draws all its power from its own fuel cells.

Walter Cronkite in the Living Room of the Future (1967) (CBS)

The Living Room 2001

The living room of the future is a place of push-button luxury and mid-century modern aesthetics. The sunken living room may have inflatable furniture and disposable paper children's chairs, but Cronkite assures us that there's no reason why the home of the future shouldn't have rocking chairs to remind us that "the present and the future are just extensions of the past."

Once inside we may find ourselves in a glass enclosure where the fluff and grime we've accumulated on our travels has been electrostatically removed. Now we walk into the living room. what would a 21st century home look like inside? Well, I'm sitting in the living room of a model of the home of the future, conceived by Philco Ford and designed by Paul McCobb, which is where 21st century homes entertain guests. The room has pretty much everything anyone could want: a large (some might say too large) full-color 3D TV screen, a stereo sound system that fills the room with music, and comfortable furniture for easy conversation.

If the living room looks familiar, it's probably because it's similar to the famous short film "1999 A.D.," made in 1967 (often mistaken for 1969, which would make the moon landing less impressive) and starring a young Wink Martindale.

Walter Cronkite shows the control panel for 3D TV in 2001 (1967) (CBS)

Cronkite explains that a recent government report concluded that Americans in the year 2000 would have a 30-hour workweek and up to a month's worth of vacation time He goes on to tell the audience that this would mean more leisure time for the average person:

A lot of that new free time will be spent at home. This console controls a whole range of devices to inform, instruct and entertain the future family. The possibilities of tonight's program are shown on this screen. We can watch a soccer game, or a movie playing in full color on our big 3D TV screen. Sound comes from these earth-like speakers. Or with the push of a button, we could escape the 21st century for a while and fill the room with stereo music from another era.

The home office of 2001

Later, Cronkite takes us into the home office of the future. Here, newspapers are said to be transmitted via satellite and printed on a giant wide-format printer so that future readers can get a dead-tree copy Future Newspapers Will Be Transmitted and Printed via Satellite (1967) (CBS)

This equipment will allow normal business to be conducted here without having to go to an office in the field.

This console provides a summary of news transmitted by satellite from all over the world. Now in order to get a permanent reference newspaper, all I have to do is press this button and it comes out. When I'm done reading the news, I might check the latest weather. This screen gives me the latest stock report I might own. The telephone is the musical instrument here - a model of a possible future telephone, and this is the microphone. Now if I want to see the person I'm talking to, all I have to do is push a button and here they are. Here, while I'm working on this screen, I can stay in touch with the rest of the house through a CCTV system.

And with devices like these in the home of the future we may not have to go to work, work will come to us. In the 21st century, no home may be complete without a computerized communication console.

One of the most interesting gadgets in the office of the future, which we can clearly see, but Cronkite never addressed, is the future "electronic communication machine", the so-called "home post office" in the movie "1999 AD". In the movie 1999 AD, we see Wink Martindale's character operating a pen on a machine that allows "instant written communication between individuals anywhere in the world."

The Kitchen of 2001

Walter Cronkite in Ford's Kitchen of the Future (1967) in Philadelphia (CBS)

The Kitchen of the Future included molded-on-demand plastic panels, a technology that until a few years ago seemed rather ridiculous. With the slow but steady development of home 3D printers, the idea isn't completely ridiculous, though we still have a ways to go.

After dinner, the plate melts with the leftovers and is reshaped for the next meal. No one has ever explained why forming and re-forming plates is easier or more efficient than simply letting a machine wash them but I guess a simple dishwasher wouldn't have seemed too futuristic to people in 1967.

This could be the kitchen in the home of the future. In the 21st century, cooking is almost fully automated. Frozen or irradiated food is stored in that area over there, and the

meals in the kitchen of the future are programmed. Menus are supplied to the automated chef by typewriter or perforated computer card. The correct pre-packaged materials are transported from the storage area to this microwave oven, where they are cooked in seconds. The food comes out when the meal is done. When the meal is done, instead of reaching for a stack of plates, I just push a button and mold the right amount of cups and saucers on the spot.

By the time I'm done eating, there are no more plates to wash. The old plates would be melted down again, the leftovers destroyed in the process, and the melted plastic molded into clean plates when I next needed them.

Robot servants in 2001

Later in the program Cronkite takes us to the research labs at Queen Mary College in London, where we can see robots in development. Cronkite interviews Professor M.W. Thring about the future of domestic robotics.

M.W. Thring (left) and Walter Cronkite watch two robots in action (1967) (CBS)

Cronkite assures us that robots won't be coming to take over the world, but to simply make us breakfast:

The robots are coming. Not to rule the world, but to help out around the house. In a 2001 home, a machine like this one could help you make and serve breakfast. We may wake up every morning to the sound of robotic feet.

A robotic arm holds a juice glass on the March 12, 1967, episode of CBS's "21st Century." In the interview, the professor addresses one of the most important questions of the future home robot ant question: does it look like a human being Cronkite: Professor Sterling, what are these

Boom: This is the first prototype of a small-scale model of the future housemaid.

Cronkite: the future housemaid yes, the maid of all jobs. Doing all the day-to-day work around the house, the tedious tasks that housewives don't want to do. You'll also have to give it some instructions about decisions-it can't be more than babies and that sort of thing. Then it will memorize those instructions and whenever you tell it to do that particular program, it will do that program.

CRONKITE: What will the finished machine look like? Will it look human?"

BOOM: No, there's no reason at all for it to look human. The only problem is that it would have to live in a human house, in a human house. It has to go through doors and climb stairs and so on. But there is no other reason for it to look human. For example, it could have three or four hands, it could have eyes in its feet if it wanted to, it could be completely different.

Thring explained that the robot would put itself in a cabinet, where it would also recharge itself when needed - not unlike today's Roomba or the automated push-button vacuum cleaner from "Jason's Family," which first aired five years ago.

I first saw the show years ago at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. Paley Center for Media in New York City where I first saw the show years ago. I asked Skip at AVGeeks if he had a copy, and as it happens, he did. He digitized it and released it as a DVD, now available for purchase, called Future Not As Good As It Used To Be. Many thanks to Skip for digging up this retro-future gem. If anyone at CBS is reading this, please post 21st Century online or in a DVD case. Cronkite's exhibition is one of the most forward-thinking artifacts of the 20th century