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Not So New: Overestimating Recency Of Innovations & Issues

Floyd1

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Not sure if this really fits in here- but it often makes me say wtf;

It's to do with things said in old films/programmes that seem way ahead of their time- (so sort of Fortean-ish I suppose).

Eg. Saw a film from the early 1950s the other day and the RAF officer says something like ''Now listen chaps, I know you've all been reading in the papers that your jobs will soon be obsolete as robot planes will be taking over the skies..''

and another example was Rigsby from 'Rising Damp' talking about the ozone layer being destroyed (due to using aerosols), in the late 1970s.

Also a 1930s film (James Stewart I think), where a fax machine is used.

I don't recall hearing about the ozone layer (in mainstream life) until way into the 80s and thought fax machines were also an 80s invention.
I find it interesting that a lot of ideas/inventions are often not as modern as we sometimes think.
 
Not sure if this really fits in here- but it often makes me say wtf;

It's to do with things said in old films/programmes that seem way ahead of their time- (so sort of Fortean-ish I suppose).

Eg. Saw a film from the early 1950s the other day and the RAF officer says something like ''Now listen chaps, I know you've all been reading in the papers that your jobs will soon be obsolete as robot planes will be taking over the skies..''

and another example was Rigsby from 'Rising Damp' talking about the ozone layer being destroyed (due to using aerosols), in the late 1970s.

Also a 1930s film (James Stewart I think), where a fax machine is used.

I don't recall hearing about the ozone layer (in mainstream life) until way into the 80s and thought fax machines were also an 80s invention.
I find it interesting that a lot of ideas/inventions are often not as modern as we sometimes think.
I think this is worthy of its own thread? :cool: .. life imitates art?
 
I think this is worthy of its own thread? :cool: ...

Agreed ...

I've been guilty of history-blindness, leading to mistakenly believing something had never occurred to anyone before whatever version of it I knew within my own lifetime.

After you run into this situation enough times you come to realize it's an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. We don't arrive in this world pre-loaded with knowledge of all that's come before, and history is something that's known only through retelling.

With regard to technology, it's often been the case that forward-looking folks recognized and envisioned possibilities that would take years, decades, or even centuries to make available in everyday life.
 
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Agreed ...

I've been guilty of history-blindness, leading to mistakenly believing something had never occurred to anyone before whatever version of it I knew within my own lifetime.

After you run into this situation enough times you come to realize it's an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. We don't arrive in this world pre-loaded with knowledge of all that's come before, and history is something that's known only through retelling.

With regard to technology, it's often been the case that forward-looking folks recognized and envisioned possibilities that would take years, decades, or even centuries to make available in everyday life.
Also, I suppose it depends on the circumstances that one grew up in; Even as late as the late 1970s we didn't have a telephone or colour tv and certainly not a car, but those things were standard and not thought of as anything particularly special to everyone else I knew who owned them. For me they were just things that 'other people' had'.
 
Floyd1's opening post provides a good list of illustrations ...

... Eg. Saw a film from the early 1950s the other day and the RAF officer says something like ''Now listen chaps, I know you've all been reading in the papers that your jobs will soon be obsolete as robot planes will be taking over the skies..''

Research prototypes of unmanned aircraft were being developed during the WW1 era, and the first successful auto-piloted flight took place in 1917.


...and another example was Rigsby from 'Rising Damp' talking about the ozone layer being destroyed (due to using aerosols), in the late 1970s. ...I don't recall hearing about the ozone layer (in mainstream life) until way into the 80s ...

The stratospheric ozone layer wasn't discovered until circa 1930. By the 1950's it was demonstrated that atmospheric ozone would be destroyed by reaction with free radicals. Recognition of human influence on ozone depletion dates back to 1970, when it was demonstrated that nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizers would reach the upper atmosphere and react with the ozone. A year later this prospect became an issue in the debates over developing supersonic transports. This was the same period when the ozone-depleting risks of CFC's were recognized.

The thing that pushed ozone issues into popular awareness was the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980's.


...Also a 1930s film (James Stewart I think), where a fax machine is used.

Transmission of graphic / image content over a wire actually predated the telephone. The first commercial tele-facsimile service was established in France in 1865. The ability to send newspapers publication-quality images over a phone connection dates back to the 1920's.
 
A glaring example of this for me was the idea that advanced extraterrestrial civilisations have taken measures to shield their existence from prying eyes, eg restricting radio broadcasts. I thought this was a very modern idea, until @Mythopoeika pointed out that H.G. Wells used intercepted radio messages as the reason why, despite the, ah, astronomical odds, they still came from Mars.
 
Floyd1's opening post provides a good list of illustrations ...



Research prototypes of unmanned aircraft were being developed during the WW1 era, and the first successful auto-piloted flight took place in 1917.




The stratospheric ozone layer wasn't discovered until circa 1930. By the 1950's it was demonstrated that atmospheric ozone would be destroyed by reaction with free radicals. Recognition of human influence on ozone depletion dates back to 1970, when it was demonstrated that nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizers would reach the upper atmosphere and react with the ozone. A year later this prospect became an issue in the debates over developing supersonic transports. This was the same period when the ozone-depleting risks of CFC's were recognized.

The thing that pushed ozone issues into popular awareness was the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980's.




Transmission of graphic / image content over a wire actually predated the telephone. The first commercial tele-facsimile service was established in France in 1865. The ability to send newspapers publication-quality images over a phone connection dates back to the 1920's.

The "Electric Printing Telegraph" - a fax machine in all but name, was first patented in 1843 by Scottish inventor Alexander Bain.
 
In a museum back in the mid 80s, I saw a microwave oven that was purchased in 1956. It was the size of a regular wall oven and had lots of chrome on it. I forget the retail price at the time, but it cost as much as new Rambler or something like that. I marveled at the fact that microwave ovens for the home were available for purchase before I was born.
 
In a museum back in the mid 80s, I saw a microwave oven that was purchased in 1956. It was the size of a regular wall oven and had lots of chrome on it. I forget the retail price at the time, but it cost as much as new Rambler or something like that. I marveled at the fact that microwave ovens for the home were available for purchase before I was born.
Yes, another example. A few years ago, without looking it up, I would have said they came out in the late 1970s at the earliest, probably even the 80s actually.
Like I say though, a lot of this depends on the family you grow up in and the school you went to. If my parents had worked in an office for example, I might have known about these 'fax' machines, or if they were wealthy, we may have had a new-fangled 'microwave' oven. I remember some kids at school getting digital watches and thinking how great they were and how complicated they must be to operate. Some of them could even tell you the time in other countries! Of course digital watches and calculators had actually been around quite a while even then, but to me they were a brand new invention because up until then I hadn't seen one or read about one. Maybe they had been mentioned on 'Tomorrows World' (science & technology programme in UK), but again, depending on what family you came from, you perhaps wouldn't have watched that kind of thing.
 
In a museum back in the mid 80s, I saw a microwave oven that was purchased in 1956. It was the size of a regular wall oven and had lots of chrome on it. I forget the retail price at the time, but it cost as much as new Rambler or something like that. I marveled at the fact that microwave ovens for the home were available for purchase before I was born.
Ha yes, I thought of microwave ovens when I saw this thread too as I was amazed to find out a few years ago that they actually came out in the 1950's. I would have thought 80's.
 
Microwave ovens were sold in America long before they became sold widely over here in Britain.
AFAIK, after WWII, Britain gave away a lot of key technology to the US as a part-payment for their help in the war. Part of that was radar technology.
A US inventor working at Raytheon invented the ovens by developing the radar technology further after radar techies had reported the heating effects of radar installations.
They took a long time to find their way over here, probably because the ovens had to be safety tested according to British standards, etc.
 
I can think of two examples from one of my favorite films, It's a Gift with W. C. Fields: one linguistic and another more of a societal thing.

1. As Fields and his family are packing up to move to California, a character with a loud, boisterous voice tells him "More power to you!", a phrase I thought was coined in the 1960s.

2. In the early morning, a man asks Fields if the (clearly nonexistent) Carl LaFong lives nearby, and then tries to sell Fields an annuity policy that Mr. LaFong supposedly is interested in: "The public are buying them like hotcakes. All companies are going to discontinue this form of policy after the 23rd of this month. . . Maybe you would be interested in such a policy." I know shifty businesses have always been around, but I didn't think something like this aggressive door-to-door equivalent of telemarketing was common in 1934.
 
There was a film from the seventies which I can't remember but I think it was Donald Sutherland. He and his wife were wanting to contact their son who was at college and the husband said
"We'll use the internet" or "We'll email him", I forget which.

Peter Coyote called for an ambulance using a computer in 1992's Bitter Moon.
 
There was a film from the seventies which I can't remember but I think it was Donald Sutherland. He and his wife were wanting to contact their son who was at college and the husband said
"We'll use the internet" or "We'll email him", I forget which.

Peter Coyote called for an ambulance using a computer in 1992's Bitter Moon.

I love spotting anachronisms in movies!
The telegraph pole in Witchfinder General and the lorry visible at the end of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly spring to mind!
 
There was a film from the seventies which I can't remember but I think it was Donald Sutherland. He and his wife were wanting to contact their son who was at college and the husband said
"We'll use the internet" or "We'll email him", I forget which.

Peter Coyote called for an ambulance using a computer in 1992's Bitter Moon.
The Internet has been around since the 1960s.
 
Concerned about pollution? Immigration? Crowded roads and traffic noise? Shoddy, expensive housing and sky-high rents? Violence in the city streets?

Welcome to Rome, circa 100 AD:

Juvenal, Satire III

maximus otter
 
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There was a film from the seventies which I can't remember but I think it was Donald Sutherland. He and his wife were wanting to contact their son who was at college and the husband said
"We'll use the internet" or "We'll email him", I forget which.

Peter Coyote called for an ambulance using a computer in 1992's Bitter Moon.
That's interesting. Have to find that film.
 
Agreed ...

I've been guilty of history-blindness, leading to mistakenly believing something had never occurred to anyone before whatever version of it I knew within my own lifetime.

After you run into this situation enough times you come to realize it's an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. We don't arrive in this world pre-loaded with knowledge of all that's come before, and history is something that's known only through retelling.

With regard to technology, it's often been the case that forward-looking folks recognized and envisioned possibilities that would take years, decades, or even centuries to make available in everyday life.

I went to an interesting talk by science fiction writer whose name escapes me right now. He keeps a large collection of magazines from the prehistory of SF (1910s, 20s) and highlighted some astonishing forgotten prophecies contained therein.

He then made the excellent point that these moments in the literature are not prophetic; they are reasonable extrapolations made by scientifically literate writers based on the knowledge of the time.
 
There was a film from the seventies which I can't remember but I think it was Donald Sutherland. He and his wife were wanting to contact their son

No....I'm not accepting that. But I shall explain why I'm totally-questioning this proposition.

They >cannot< have referenced "the internet" cf 'the internetwork' or 'the net' (and certainly not the portmanteau word 'email' or 'electronic mail') in a movie the 1970s. It could not have registered with either the audience or the actors as a concept. The techology existed embyonically just in academia and US defense.

They might well have said they were going to telex their son. Or wire their son (ie idiomatically, send a telegram). Or (certainly) fax/faxed him ('oftentimes' in the US of that era they even conceivably might've 'facsimilied' him)

The whole teledata/Prestel public teleprinter concept was still to be gone through, followed by the Bulletin Board System, AOL, Compuserve et al

Or are we saying that Donald Sutherland somehow preemtively used a future idiom, via some unfathomable predictive script?

(Also: from another angle, I call BS on this it's-repeatedly-restated-around-the-internet-so-it-must-be-true First Ever Email in 1971....the US Navy was communicating using electromechanically-encoded text point-to-point-to-multipoint RTTY radioteletype in the 1920s/30s)
 
@Floyd1 - if we understand 'retrofuturism' to mean "the use of a style or aesthetic considered futuristic in an earlier era" (Fritz Lang / Flash Gordon / chrome & jetpacks ie an obsolete predictive view of an unrealized pseudofantastical future), what term best-describes your concept?

My best attempt before I fall into a dreamless slumber (& pray that the phone doesn't ring) is prochronoclasty.

(But my neologismic aptitudinosity is currepresently inexemplarific)
 
@Floyd1 - if we understand 'retrofuturism' to mean "the use of a style or aesthetic considered futuristic in an earlier era" (Fritz Lang / Flash Gordon / chrome & jetpacks ie an obsolete predictive view of an unrealized pseudofantastical future), what term best-describes your concept?

My best attempt before I fall into a dreamless slumber (& pray that the phone doesn't ring) is prochronoclasty.

(But my neologismic aptitudinosity is currepresently inexemplarific)
Sorry Erms, I'll have to get my dictionary out.
 
As to things seemingly being out of place ...

No this isn't a captured Klingon Bird of Prey!

What year do you think this is from?
 

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... As Fields and his family are packing up to move to California, a character with a loud, boisterous voice tells him "More power to you!", a phrase I thought was coined in the 1960s. ...

The Free Dictionary cites The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms as attributing the American version "more power to X" to as early as the mid-1800's.
 
As to things seemingly being out of place ...
No this isn't a captured Klingon Bird of Prey!
What year do you think this is from?

The design dates from 60 years ago (no later than 1958 / 1959, when the design competition ended).

The only surviving specimen (of only 2 built) was retired to museum display 50 years ago this year.
 
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