High tech supersleuth Dick Tracy turns 75

September 21, 2006 It’s time to pay homage to super sleuth Dick Tracy who turns 75 next week, or more specifically, it’s 75 years since Dick first appeared in the Detroit Mirror in 1931. The creation of cartoonist, indeed futurist, Chester Gould, Detective Tracy used forensics, futuristic methodology and wireless technology way ahead of its time. Gould’s imagination gave us the Closed Circuit TV Police villains line-up in 1953 - real suspect lineups were introduced the following year. Dick was using Electronic Telephone Number Pickup in 1954, 28 years before Caller ID was patented. One we’ve still to see was the Magnetic Space Coupe which took Tracy to the moon in 1962, seven years before the first actual moon landing, with the prospects of the magnetic car still realistic, having been used in the Lexus Concept from "Minority Report". The most iconic of Dick Tracy’s kit though, was his wrist communicator, a device that started countless millions of technological dreams in a young American technology community which went on to create ubiquitous wireless communication. There would not have been one leader in the communications revolution who wasn’t touched by Dick Tracy’s videoconferencing wrist watch. The device arrived in 1946 with two-way audio, became video in 1964, and a wireless wrist-worn computer in 1987. Gould’s imagination deserves credit for helping to fuel the communications boom of the late 20th Century.

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