Before handy phone cameras, people had to sketch their surreptitious pictures.  From Punch, 1867.

Here's a precursor to the 1987 "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" anti-narcotics campaign, which showed an egg frying in a pan.  "Neuropatia" is by Fernando Calleja for Cosmópolis, 1929.

Here's a precursor to the Archie McPhee cat mask, from engraver Tirzah Garwood in 1930. 

Here's a precursor to a Koopa next to a Warp Pipe in Nintendo's Mario universe. From the August 1942 issue of the Old Line magazine, as scanned by the University of Maryland Libraries.

Here's a precursor to AirB&B, complete with "the proverbial bedroom," from The Hawaiian Gazette., May 26, 1911.

Long before the frogs were singing in the Budweiser ads, they were working for Ford Motor's Model T.

Here's a precursor to Carl Sandburg's Potato Face Blind Man from Rootabaga Stories.  It's "a supposed specimen of aboriginal art" discovered in New Brunswick, 1851, from the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1881.

"Love's 'ALPHABET' you know so well, that over me you've cast your 'SPELL.'"  It's a precursor to Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's recording of "One-Letter Words."

Here's a precursor to Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table (1997), from 1911.

Here's a precursor to Pez candy dispensers, from 1907.

We discovered a precursor to our 2006 "diamond cycle" diagram, courtesy of surrealist painter and author Ithell Colquhoun's The Crying of the Wind: Ireland (1955): "Perhaps a fine day in Kerry is best of all, when the air is like a diamond yet the dews are never far away."

From Carolina Magazine, 1921.  (We previously discovered another precursor to If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow, which we showcased here.)

Here's a precursor to The Flintstones.  "Roller skating in the Stone Age," from the early 1900s.

You've heard of meeting one's fate, but here's exactly where it happens: Denton, Texas.  The handwriting reads, "Here's where we meet our fate."  Note that Denton is the location for the fateful Rocky Horror story.

Here's a precursor to Mae West's "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?" (1933), from the silent film Shooting Stars (1928).

We hear talk about how technology is ruining our posture, but people have been hurting their backs staring at windows since the invention of windows.  Our illustration (one among innumerable examples) appears in Cassell's, 1896.

Here's a precursor to retrieving data stored in "the cloud."  From Applied Biophysics by Norman Howard-Jones, 1949.

This Ramsgate is a precursor to Nabokov's Ramsdale, from The Z.Z.G., or Zig Zag Guide Round and About the Bold and Beautiful Kentish Coast by Francis Cowley Burnand and illustated by Phil May, 1897.  The caption reads, "Youth and age a common sight at Ramsgate."

Here's a precursor to Why Cats Paint, from 1887.