I was watching an old Hawaii 5-0 episode and the killer was walking around police headquarters when he passed a large info board.
This mentioned online information about police records.
Since they filed the series on location this must have been a real sign.
What would be the online capabilities for the police back in 1973?
Thank you.
Are you saying they filmed Hawaii 5-0 in a police station in Hawaii?
Zero? My department went away from pen and paper reports sometime in the early 2000s.
That was the year that ALOHAnet, the first application of computers communicating via radio, began. But it was developed so that U -Hawaii academics could share data between their islands, not so average citizens could access public information
Well, police in the UK were using a computer system for “background checks of suspects’ characters” in 1974. Maybe it was online on an intranet rather than an internet. It might even simply mean paper records available “in the system.”
McGarrett and company regularly got reports from Mainland police through the Telex system, especially in response to any inquires they might make. They also had fax capabilities, the technology for which goes back at least to the 1930s. (It was used in the Charlie Chan movies.) There were also some Five-0 episodes in which computers were used to track and identify criminals, which was a big thing back then.
!973 wasn’t really that long ago, after all. It was a far cry from Scotland Yard in the days of Jack the Ripper.
Thanks, I went back to take a closer look and it seems that this was something about an internal police unit. The episode was called Draw Me a Killer. Season 6. Episode 2.
Could have been a fake sigh they “filmed”. We were notorious for dressing a location with doors to nowhere, misleading signage - Owner of the location was usually happy to disguise his property; the alternative might be tourists.
Dan
Do you have a timestamp? All the old 5-0’s are on Amazon Prime.
I don’t think you can state that as a definite thing. Just because they filmed in Hawaii doesn’t mean they used real police headquarters, it would have been much easier to build a set for a location that gets used in every episode.
And as Dandan said, even if it was a real location the sign might have just been set dressing.
Iolani Palace was the H50 headquarters, but it was only for exterior shots.
And to the OP: I found a 1975 press account referring to the Michigan State Police using “online information about wanted persons, stolen cars and other property, and revoked or suspended drivers’ licenses.” Only two years after the episode, so pretty close in time.
Can’t say what was happening in '73. By '76 there were major efforts to put terminals in police cars. They had the advantage of radio communications while the rest of us were bound by copper land lines.
It’s at 39 minutes.