Boy's Own

Camp Life for Boys by Gordon Stables MD, RN.

Part 1...The Great Button Age

 I do most firmly believe that there is a bit of the Crusoe in every really manly boy who lives and breathes. And quite right too. All our boasted civilisation, while elevating the minds of mankind, tends to render the body puny and effete. Most of our very cleverest of inventions aim at doing away with bodily labour and muscular exertion of every sort; and if science – electric and otherwise – continues to advance with the same rapid strides it is now doing, in the course of say, two hundred years the only thing men will be fit for will be to touch a button. Then will come the age of buttons or The Great Button Age. Human beings – bald and toothless, you know, with immense great chumps of heads on them and no bodies to speak of – will hardly care to move off the lounge. When they want breakfast they will touch a button, and presently it will come through the wall or up through the floor, or somewhere. When they want the things cleared away they will touch another button, and, hey! presto! The things will disappear.

When they want to go out they will touch a button, and the softly-cushioned electric carriage will come to the door of its own accord.

If one wants music in one’s room, he will merely have to switch it on by touching a button. Nobody will bother going to the concert-room, or any place else. He will be able to switch on a song, or chorus, and by darkening the room – another button – be able to see as well as hear...

(extract from Boy's Own Paper article Camp Life For Boys (September 3, 1892)