Editing 1072: Seventies

Jump to: navigation, search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision Your text
Line 3: Line 3:
 
| date      = June 22, 2012
 
| date      = June 22, 2012
 
| title    = Seventies
 
| title    = Seventies
−
| image    = seventies.png
+
| image    = Seventies.png
 +
| imagesize =
 
| titletext = Hey, man, the 1670s called. They were like 'Wherefore this demonic inſtrument? By what ſorcery does it produce ſuch ſounds?"
 
| titletext = Hey, man, the 1670s called. They were like 'Wherefore this demonic inſtrument? By what ſorcery does it produce ſuch ſounds?"
 
}}
 
}}
  
 
==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
−
This is a take on the common insult "<year> called and they want their <item> back", used when one is wearing something out of fashion (used before in [[875: 2009 Called]]). In this case, the comment is ''literally'' true: someone in the '70s called, but did not leave a message. Instead, the caller is puzzled because answering machines and especially voicemail were rare or nonexistent in the 1970s, and his telephone has a {{w|rotary dial}}, rather than a {{w|touch tone}}, so he can't "press" 1.  
+
[[File:746 telephone in red.JPG|right|thumb|A GPO 746, the standard UK telephone from the late 1960s to the 1980s.]]
 +
This is another take on the common insult "<year> called and they want their <whatever> back".  Randall has used this joke before in the comic "[[875|2009 Called]]". In this case, this one is funny because someone in the 70s would not know how to leave a voicemail because answering machines and especially voicemail had not been invented yet. His telephone has a {{w|rotary dial}}, rather than a {{w|touch tone}}, so he can't "press 1". Originally telephones had rotary dials instead of buttons. When you lifted the receiver you would hear a tone that let you know you had a connection and you could dial the number, this is the "dial tone." This is the origin of the phrases "dial tone" and "dialing a telephone number".
  
−
The caller is wearing flared ("bell bottom") trousers, which are frequently associated with 1970s fashion. The caller is somehow using time travel to directly dial a number in the present.
+
The title text plays off the fact that the telephone had not yet been invented in the seventeenth century. The title text also uses the {{w|long S}}, a standard way of writing the letter 's' in initial and medial locations of words. The character, 'ſ', looks like a lower-case 'f' without the cross-bar (or like an integral sign, which is derived from the long s (for sum) in much the same way that the summation symbol is derived from the Greek letter sigma).  It was in common use  in written English up through the mid 19th century, and would have been used in the 1670s.
−
 
 
−
Originally telephones had rotary dials instead of buttons, hence the origin of the terms "dial tone" and "to dial a number". Touch tone phones were introduced in the 1960s, but weren't standard in many places until the 1980s. Rotary dial telephones used {{w|pulse dialing}} to transmit numbers and push-button telephones use {{w|Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signaling|DTMF}} (although phones from the '80s and '90s could often use both). Modern {{w|voicemail}} systems regularly don't support pulse dialing, so even selecting "1" on the rotary dial would not choose "1" in the voicemail menu system.
 
−
 
 
−
The title text plays off the fact that the telephone had not yet been invented in the 17th century: in fact, all of the component technologies, including the materials used for the casing, were unknown at that point, and therefore the telephone is assumed to be supernatural in origin ("demonic... ſorcery"). Randall uses the character "ſ", the {{w|long s}}, which was used in written English to take the place of the modern lowercase "s" in the beginning and middle of words. It was phased out around the beginning of the 19th century.
 
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
−
:Cueball: Nice jacket. Hey&ndash;
+
:Cueball: Nice jacket. Hey&mdash;
−
:Cueball: The seventies called.
+
:Cueball: The Seventies called.
 
:Out-of-panel: Oh? What'd they want?
 
:Out-of-panel: Oh? What'd they want?
  
−
:[Cueball looks at his smartphone, holding it in his hand.]
+
:[Cueball looking at phone]
 
:Cueball: I don't know. They didn't leave a message.
 
:Cueball: I don't know. They didn't leave a message.
 
:Out-of-panel: Weird.
 
:Out-of-panel: Weird.
  
 
:1974:
 
:1974:
−
:[A person in bell bottoms, who has no jacket, looks at a rotary phone receiver.]
+
:[Person in bell bottoms using a rotary phone to call the present day, with an incredulous look on his face.]
 
:Voicemail service: If you'd like to leave a message, press "1".
 
:Voicemail service: If you'd like to leave a message, press "1".
  
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
{{comic discussion}}
−
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 
−
[[Category:Phones]]
 

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)

Templates used on this page:

Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1072:_Seventies"