Little windows into the past

[sholio]

Another thing that's fun about reading older books is getting those little windows into the technology and adaptations of the past. You can always look it up, but the way it's handled in books written at the time gives you an idea of how casually (or not) people thought about it, and related to it.

This particular thing, I happened to notice because there was a discussion a little while back in Stranger Things fandom about whether 911 would've made it to rural Indiana by 1984. I don't remember how that ended up working out (I do know that the show Rescue 911, in the late 80s, was what popularized the existence of 911 as a thing; I remember that much from actually living through those years). But I now know from this book that in 1976, New York City not only had 911, but it was widespread and well known enough that most people knew what it was and how it worked, and the author also assumes the reader will know what it is without providing an explanation. And it was already free from pay phones.

(Okay, fine, I guess Block gets his own dedicated tag.)

Comments

[leesa_perrie]

Guess it's like watching an old TV show and suddenly remembering that, yes, mobile phones did use to be that big and bulky in the 90s (like happened to me in The Sentinel fandom)!! I wonder what will surprise us if we rewatched SGA in 20 years time - like, oh, I though we had 'x', 'y' and 'z' by then, but apparenly we only had 'x'!! :D

[sholio]

I have actually been kind of surprised how early cell phones (well, "car phones", initially) start showing up on TV. I didn't remember them being widespread in the 80s, but apparently they were common enough to turn up regularly in movies and shows.

[lunabee34]

My parents were early adopters of tech, and we had a car phone starting in the 80s. At first it was huge and in a big bag, and we left it in the car at all times. And then the next one was smaller, but still huge and we left it in the car at all times. LOL

[sholio]

Yeah, come to think of it, we got one in about '88 or 89, though in our case it was because we lived in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and needed some way of contacting the outside world! But yeah, our first one was about the size of a very large, heavy shoebox, I think. And only worked some of the time.

[lunabee34]

I did not grow up as isolated as you did, but we lived rurally, and that was the reason we got the car phone. My parents were afraid of breaking down and having to wait hours for somebody to drive by and help.

What this meant, though, is that I was raised to think of cell phones as the emergency back up for car break downs which I didn't break until I was like in grad school. It was well into the 2000s before I regularly used a cell phone as a phone and not a distress beacon. LOL

[kore]

Yeah, they were sort of a Masters of the Universe thing in limos and fancy restaurants -- one shows up in Wall Street. Most people didn't have them, but they were around.

[leesa_perrie]

When I decided to rewatch The A Team about 15 or so years ago, I was surprised that they had a car phone. I hadn't remembered them being around at that time, probably because we never had one. I was also surprised to learn recently that the first commercial CD was released as early as 1982! I knew it was 80s, but hadn't realised it was that early! Quiz shows can be quite informative, lol! :D

[abyssinia]

It's like how 80% of the plots in Buffy the Vampire Slayer wouldn't have worked if they had cell phones.

And that's interesting. I vividly remember when I was in...2nd? 3rd? grade (so that would have been something around 1988) there being a big thing in my elementary school about this new "911" thing and this huge safety program about learning dial it. And that was in a larger Midwestern city.

[sholio]

The workarounds that the characters in this book have to use to get in touch with each other are amazing, looking back on it now from the cell phone era. (And I grew up pre-cell phone! I didn't even have one until recently! It's changed so much.)

That is really interesting about 911! It was probably pioneered in a few large cities and then spread outward from there. I was really surprised by the mention of it in this book, especially in a casual way that implies readers would be expected to know what it was, because 1976 is earlier than I'd thought.

Of course, confusing the issue, sometimes books are edited later to update the technology in them. I don't think they do that much in adult fiction, though; I've heard of it happening more in kid books.

[abyssinia]

Yeah. And now I'm wondering if maybe it was just a standard safety special learning activity for 2nd?3rd? graders? Because, you know, perception at that age and memory now is a bit hazy. But I definitely had never heard of it before that and they gave us magnets to put on our refrigerators at home and everything. I would definitely be surprised about the 1976 thing! I love your idea of learning about living in past eras through contemporary books.

(if I remember right, from when I lived in Scotland, even though 911 isn't the emergency number there, they have it forward to their emergency number because American tv is so prevalent that folks over there think it's their emergency number)

It feels crazy teaching colleges students now - I don't feel that old, but I'm ~twice as old as college freshmen and we grew up in such different ages. Like I remember when we got a computer and none of my friends had one and I remember first getting internet and I was 24 before I got a cell phone and some things are SO different - things that they've always assumed are part of life are things I remember never having.

(I wonder - I feel nostalgic about tv from the '90s, I wonder how *old* it looks to my students)

[sheron]

Writing fic without cellphones is SUCH fun. Because you can do so many things that just aren't possible anymore because of instant connection/Internet/cameras/etc.

[arduinna]

So this has nothing to do with anything in the past hundred-plus years, but! A few years back I read and promptly recced a book that did the same sort of "wow, technology happened earlier than I thought". It's called "Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes", and it's kind of really great. Basically, the telegraph was an early Internet, to an astonishing degree.

[sholio]

I actually read some of that! :D I remember when it was kind of popular in fandom circles - your rec post might even have been what brought it to my attention.

[lilacsigil]

I had to go look up when Australia got an emergency number (000 here) because I don't remember ever having to learn about it. Turns out it was 1969, so it's been here my whole life! But now kids have to be taught to dial 000 not 911!

[kore]

That surprises me because 911 was definitely a Thing in early 1980s New Mexico, and I don't really remember learning about it. It was there, in the background.

What really blows some peoples' minds is I remember there was a time before you automatically got assigned an SSN in the US -- you got one when you were about sixteen, because that was when you were assumed able to work, and thus eligible for benefits. Which is why my SSN begins with what was called the "area number" because they were assigned by where you were living, rather than where you were born.

[winter_elf]

yea, me and my sister got ours at the same time - when I started working when I was 13, so my parents got us both SSN's (in the late 70's). Our numbers are 4 digits apart - and we were born 2 years apart :)

[kore]

People were SO SUSPICIOUS of them too. "The government can use them to track you!" My parents knew some anti-establishment types who just refused to get them (and some people object on other grounds). Imagine trying to do that now. What strikes me about the wired-up world is how trackable everyone is, and how people are completely okay with that and turn it into a thing even -- check-ins, Instagramming where they are, &c &c.

[ratcreature]

That's interesting about the central emergency number. Germany got one in 1973 (eta: the West that is, the East had a central number since the late fifties), and it's actually a really interesting story, because it happened after a campaign of a father who lost his son due to bad emergency response time four years earlier, and then doggedly advocated for it, creating a foundation to lobby and such.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

II feel like I've always known about 911—I learned about it early in grade school in the mid-70s. But I grew up in a major city.

It seems to have spread very unevenly; I found this about the general history of 911: https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts
and this about Indiana specifically, where Huntington, Indiana got it in 1968: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/911-emergency-dispatch-1st-came-to-indiana-50-years-ago/
Huntington isn't a big city by any stretch of the imagination; it had around 16,000 people when they got 911 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington,_Indiana#2000_census, sidebar on the right)
Vigo County wouldn't get it until the early 90s!

So I'm happy to credit Hawkins with 911 by the mid-90s.

I have been thinking a lot about cell phones because of tv and books: Harry Dresden's life might be different if he could carry a cell phone! Legion is all over the place in chronology—fashions from the 60s and 70s, technology from all the eras, except cell phones. Umbrella Academy really required an AU with no cell phones, because if they'd had cell phones, a lot of what happened in the first season would have played out very differently.

I didn't get a cell phone until the aughts! Now it's hard to remember life before it.