I have finished grading my tests (for tonight, new batch tomorrow), so I spent a little more time surfing the phone issue - turns out to be lots of interesting stuff about this. Still no good specific answers to my question.
I found one source that said that while rotary phones were introduced in the US in 1919, they did not become widely used until the mid 1950s. I guess that would make the majority of television shows at least rotary, though of course Andy Griffith's house went to an operator (did Lucy and Ricky have direct dial?, Rob and Laura? I am pretty sure the latter did, but I am getting vague and confusing memories of plot lines involving party lines, which is probably a different issue). See: http://www.oldphones.com/nytimes.html Pushbutton, or touch tone, phones were introduced in the 1970s, but apparently most residential users made the switch after deregulation in 1984 (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-rotary-phone.htm, not sure how reliable this source is). I have a pretty clear memory of having the standard push button phone in my parent's house in the late 1970s, and we were not early adopters of technology to be sure - maybe these got rolled out sooner in Los Angeles. I remember getting those books with the recipes for creating various simple songs and melodies by pushing different telephone buttons, and thinking that was just about as cool as things could get until the flying cars arrived. I also remember having a pushbutton phone at home, and seeing most people on television dialing it up old school for a few years more. I am going to use 1984 as a place holder for when pushbutton phones might have begun to appear routinely in television shows. That gives me, as a first estimation, the following dates for when various forms of telephony began to appear routinely in popular entertainments: 1955: Rotary Phones (mid 1950s) 1984: Push Button Phones (after degregulation) 1994: Cell Phones (X-Files premiers in 1993, I add a year to get to it being "routine", though this may be a year or two early; see note above that first use by a major character in Seinfeld was 1996 - I believe that was Kramer, talking with Jerry while chasing down his kidnapped car) 1996: Cordless Phones (based on a non-representative sample of films using corded films around 1994, but not in 1996 and after. I probably don't have enough real evidence to give different dates for the routine use of cell phones and cordless phones). I agree with David that another important telephone milestone in popular entertainment is the depiction of phone booths (something my 14 year old son has almost no direct experience with, while one of my clearest memories as an early adolescent was my mother's passionate commands to never leave the house without, and never spend, my last dime, so that I could always call her and tell her where I was). -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
