A little wonder, every day

Bradbury’s “seashells” and wireless headphones

Ray Bradbury photographed in August 1975 by Alan Light. Original: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ray_Bradbury_(1975).jpg. CC BY 2.0; credit “Photo by Alan Light”; no edits.

first-generation Apple AirPods and charging case, photographed by Maurizio Pesce on 7 September 2016. Original: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AirPods.jpg. CC BY 2.0; credit Maurizio Pesce; no edits.

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Ray Bradbury photographed in August 1975 by Alan Light. Original: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ray_Bradbury_(1975).jpg. CC BY 2.0; credit “Photo by Alan Light”; no edits.

Listen to fact0:00 / —

In his 1953 novel *Fahrenheit 451*, Ray Bradbury described tiny “Seashells”—radios that characters put in their ears to listen to music and talk without wires. In 2016, Apple introduced AirPods, completely wireless headphones. The calendar-year difference between the novel’s publication and the AirPods announcement is 63 years. The resemblance is the idea of a small personal audio device worn in the ear; Bradbury’s radios were not Bluetooth headphones or an exact technical prediction of AirPods.