Technology related anachronisms on TV and in films etc.

[petervk2mlg]

I went to the cinema the other day and saw The Great Gatsby. The film is set in New York in 1922.
Nick Carraway, the film's narrator his a nice radio in his house. A bit of an anachronism!
See pic

[D.Finney]

Peter, I saw a 1920s "period" drama a while ago and a Bush DCA90A was used as a prop!

[Station X]

In view of that number of posts of this nature we get, this thread has been retitled and made sticky.

[Electrone]

On Agatha Christie's Poirot Elephants Can Remember (ITV) last night, there was a brief shot of a radio, the dial looked typically Philips It was difficult to discern the rest of the radio, could anyone who saw it hazard a guess as to the make and model and was it right for the period (1938)?

[CharlieH]

So glad I'm not the only one who spotted that in Gatsby Peter! Got a lot of strange looks when I had my 'Aha!' moment in the cinema.

[emeritus]

The "Hovis" TV advert of a few years ago which showed the boy with the loaf going through time as he went through the village, showed a family listening to Winston Churchill's "We shall fight them on the beaches" broadcast on a Bush DAC90.

[Nicklyons2]

Yes, I think the TV props buyers assume the DAC90 was in continuous production from around 1920 to 1955! Foyle's war has one lurking in the inspector's office; IMHO it is a very good series generally but it has a few 'discrepancies'. In one episode the lights in a house fail and someone exclaims that "the ring main's gone" - bit naughty wiring lights into a ring main, particularly when they hadn't been 'invented' yet. One of my favourites is a US drama in which the Kennedy assassination is being viewed 'live' on TV on a Sony Trinitron; I've heard of being ahead of the game but......

[Brigham]

One of the David Suchet (excellent) Poirots showed a BBC transcription turntable looking suspiciously like a Recordon dictation machine of 1950-odd. Not sure the BBC would consider that 'broadcast standard' even after it had been invented.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi there
Just seen the motor racing film 'Rush' about the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt - a good film even for someone like myself who knows nothing about, or has no interest in, the sport.
Of course any good train spotter looks at the props used - the film was set in the period 1970 - 1976.
Correct:-
A couple of the ubiquitous Sony KV1300s working well
A Thorn 1500 24" sitting in the corner, mute
A Bush TV193S, though alarmingly displaying a colour picture!
A slightly mysterious set, possibly a Teleton or Telrpo with four horizontal varicap buttons along the bottom
A Pye 697 series with, unusually, slider controls.
An unknown (to me) Grundig and similarly a Siemens both working in the German sequences, both appeared approximately of the period, though maybe the latter was a little too modern.
An unknown American large-screen TV - again, appeared period.
Mistakes:-
A Thorn 1691 mono portable - displaying a colour picture - in around 1972.
A grubby white Eighties Ferguson TX90 working well - and in the Japanese sequence!
A nice dial Trimphone, but with a 746 bell.
I'm sure there are racing car enthusiasts who will be busy spotting errors there as well, but the period was, to my eyes, well recreated. Be nice if someone did ask our advice about the electronics, though!
Some nice non-racing cars, such as a pair of Citroen DSs, a Lancia Fulvia and Hunt's Cooper-S, plus some early Datsuns.
Glyn

[G6Tanuki]

Equipment-spotting is always fun: one of my favourite movies, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" features closeups of a CGI-rendered radio which is very clearly a Hallicrafters S20-style radio with an oscilloscope screen where the speaker would normally be.

[Fezziwig]

It hardly matters really but it is fun pointing out these things.

In an episode of Endeavour (Young Insp Morse) they referred to watching the Coronation 1953 in Bicester. Not sure there would have been a TV signal there in 1953??

[paulsherwin]

It was just possible to pull in a signal from Alexandra Palace in Bicester. Oxford received its TV from AP/CP throughout the 405 era - there was a BBC relay built at Beckley in the early 60s, but by then everybody had paid for huge expensive aerial arrays and weren't prepared to pay again for them to be realigned.

London FM radio stations like Capital and LBC used to get to Oxford using a good aerial in the 80s before the FM band filled up with local stations. It's only 60 miles away.

[Fezziwig]

I thought I had read up how far AP reached.. Was well short of Bicester. Of course VHF and UHF has a patchy coverage. A good aerial at a high location can pull in a signal from well outside the official service area. Shame the FM band is crowded now. We used to get a weak but constant FM signal from BRT Belgium in North Wales on I think 98.5 before R1 took over.

[Fezziwig]

Not quite to do with radio etc but I was shocked to see a later generation London Routemaster in Foyle's War. Haven't been able to sleep since.

Often in WW2 dramas AR88s and HROs are seen. Not sure there would have been many AR88s in the UK at the time

[AC/HL]

According to Bletchley park, the AR88 was introduced in 1940, so would be OK.

[AndiiT]

Hi,
Not quite radio related, but a small "Anachronism" all the same.

There was an episode of "Juliet Bravo" where I spotted a Push button telephone mounted on a Planset 625, at one point in the episode Sergeant (Joe) Beck picked the phone receiver up to make a call and used a dialing motion with his hand - this, of course, was seen from the rear side of the phone instrument.

Andrew

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by Fezziwig

I thought I had read up how far AP reached.. Was well short of Bicester.

This map shows the CH1 coverage from CP. I suspect AP didn't travel so well so you could be right after all.

[McMurdo]

I've just seen a Channel-5 documentary on the Apollo-13 incident where mission control appeared to have gained LCD computer monitors

[Relay Automatic]

Years ago in Australia there was a TV series 'Power without Glory' with a storyline that went from the 1890s to the 1940s. Curiously the main character started with a 1930s Bakelite Tele 162 and finished with a wooden Ericsson magneto wall phone circa 1901. On another long running Aussie sitcom set in a 1980s country town the doctor's surgery and the police station had dial 801 type phones but the actors always lifted the handset and waited for an operator to answer to make a call. Makes you wonder what the set people were thinking. Then again I was recently told by a young technology 'expert' that TV was invented in 1976, it had always been colour and the B&W bit was only when old films were screened.

Andrew

[Andrew2]

Just watched the first part of the Great Train Robbery drama (BBC1 Weds 18 Dec) and near the end it showed one of the gang listening to the BBC News on a portable radio. Oh dear, they got the time pips wrong. This was set in 1963 when there were six equal pips, but we heard the 'long' final pip which didn't come in 'til the 70's (I think).