Again, from 1947:
“talking letters”- a device that was called “mail a voice” where you could record a three minute letter on a paper disk, fold it and mail it. The recipient could then play the recording on their own Mail A Voice. Disks could be erased magnetically and reused.
An audience response system that measured arousal of viewers to predict a movie’s success rate within 10 percent, developed by Dr. Frank Gallup of Gallup poll fame.
From 1948:
Experiments with surrogate motherhood in animals and a discussion of the first attempts to create a test tube baby, hitting a scientific wall by not being able to form an artificial placenta.
As much as things have changed, people still want to hear the voices of their friends, live or recorded; we still are looking for immediate audience response to try to predict success or failure, but we have gotten the process of artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization for humans worked out, although who acts as the incubator still has the same thorny ethical issues that existed back in the 1940’s.