On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 3:02 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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).
There is a lag between the introduction of a technology and its mainstream adoption. When a new technology is used for the first time in a movie or TV show, it has to be done at a time when the viewer can recognize the object and know what it's used for, and if the writer waits to long to adopt the object, the viewer will think, "Why's (the character) doing that? Doesn't he have a cell phone?" Years ago I saw a documentary about telecommunications where they showed old footage of a rotary phone switching station and described how it worked. There were long rows of vertical rods and when you picked up your receiver and got a dial tone, you enabled a rod. There were seven wheels encircling the rod and as you dialed a wheel would turn according to the number of pulses. When you finished dialing the number the wheels would be aligned for the number you were calling and the connection would be made. When the rotary telephone was first introduced, most telephone exchanges did not have this infrastructure and Bell Telephone (who had a phone monopoly and rented phones to households, for you young'uns) would not make rotary telephones available in an area until they installed the new exchange. So if New York had rotary phones, it would not be in movies if people in Cleveland could not recognize the technology. Touch tone, or push button, phones used electronic switches instead of mechanical ones which were much less expensive, much faster, and more reliable. -- 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
