Comic Strips

12411 readers

2511 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
The comic must be a complete story.
If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
You may post comics from others or your own.
If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
Politeness.
Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.

Web of links

[email protected]: "I use Arch btw"
[email protected]: memes (you don't say!)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

644

When we all have pocket telephones (a 1919 comic) (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

On March 5, 1919, cartoonist W.K. Haselden published a comic in the British newspaper The Mirror, illustrating what the world would be like if telephones were portable.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

I got to wondering what sort of social proliferation the telephone managed to achieve in England by 1919. Nothing exhaustive, but this is what I've found:

By the 1930s, it was common for affluent homes in the UK to have their own telephones, with networks spreading far enough for calls to be made across several cities. The majority of callers continued to use local phone boxes or pay phones until the 1950s and 60s, when improvements in home phone technology made systems cheaper and more easily available.

Ref: https://www.italktelecom.co.uk/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-home-telephone

1918

Leeds automatic telephone exchange was opened on 18 May in Basinghall Street - a Strowger-type manufactured and installed by the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company. It was the largest of its kind in Europe, equipped for 6,800 lines with an ultimate capacity of 15,000, and the first exchange in this country capable of being extended to give service to 100,000 subscribers. It was also the first in which the caller was required to dial five figures for every local call.

Ref: https://www.britishtelephones.com/histuk.htm

So for a cartoonist to be able to imagine having a personal phone at all in 1919, let alone a portable one, is pretty interesting. Maybe missed their calling as a sci-fi writer/illustrator :)