Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
One of the most annoying anachronisms I've seen is an author describing customer service employees with name tags in 1909. (At least I assume it's an anachronism -- I may be wrong, of course, but it felt really out of place!)
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It would be out of place in most places in 1970s Ireland. Did the idea originate in the USA?
Even now it's rare here & UK in locally owned businesses. I'm curious now to research and see did any big NY department store do that in 1909. I'd not place any bet either way!
Historical before you were a teenager is really hard to get the details right. Also some modern cinema and TV of Victorian things make the stuff OLDER than say Sherlock Homes books. But some rural places in 1950s in the UK were still quite mid Victorian in some respects. About 1/4 of England still had no Electricity in 1948. My dad's house in 1937 Belfast had none. They first got a mains radio when they moved two streets in 1938.
Victorians had electric light, steam turbines in ships and for electricity, phones, telegraph, movies, colour photos as well as monochrome (though rare), wireless telegraphy, mechanical TV (rare), typewriters, duplicators (two kinds), gas mantels for gas lamps (but electric lamps were earlier!), torpedoes, submarines, the CRT (but no amplifying valves), electric hearing aids, acoustic P.A. using a diaphragm, two combs and compressed air, dry batteries, vaccines etc.
Steam, electric, petrol and diesel vehicles at the same time.
H. G. Wells despite writing SF, had Ironclads (invented during USA Civil War) in the War of the Worlds, but those metal clad wooden ships were already obsolete. I don't think the British Navy had any then.
Elizabethan era is trickier than tricky Jacobean.