# Flat-screen reference in The Fly? (1958)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 24, 2002, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394 "2002-08-24T20:01:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/21 "2002-08-28T12:01:27Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by RM Mentock \*  
> \*\*Doesn’t Orwell’s 1984 have apartments where one whole wall is taken up by flat screens? And they’re two-way, right? \*\*

No, they didn’t take up a whole wall. In the book they sound more or less like the monitors you see in _Twelve Monkeys_ or _Brazil_ (both very good Terry Gilliam films by the way). In the case of _Brazil_, the _1984_ish connections are obvious, if not quite as scary.

Now that I think of it, in the book, I don’t really even remember that they were _televisions_ so much as they were _cameras_, so they may not have even been two-way.

Now the commercial called _1984_ from Apple had one heck-of-a-screen. Well, until that silly non-conformist ruined it for everyone. 🙂

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**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/22 "2002-08-28T15:39:48Z")

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Here’s [Chapter One of 1984](http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/1/) and the telescreens are oblong metal plaques which form part of the surface of the wall. Not sure how much of the surface.

What did the movie protray?

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**Author:** ![Wikkit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c0e974/32.png) [@Wikkit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wikkit)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2002, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-screen-reference-in-the-fly-1958/125394/23 "2002-08-29T09:35:30Z")

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Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury had full wall TVs, but he was never much of a futurist and based them on CRTs. Reading that book made me think he also wasn’t much of a scientist, either; at one point in the book one screen is broken and he wrote of something like the vacuum leaking out and flowing around the room. I can’t find a proper quote, though.

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