The plot in an old Charlie Chan movie hinged on fax technology as well. I remember once trying to convince a very tech-savvy guy that it went back at least as far as the 1930s, but he wouldn’t believe me.
Without it, the modern newspaper industry (Hearst and all that) couldn’t have been born.
Saw an article relating to this today, but I can’t Google it up.
Anyway, in the script for Gladiator, Maximus was supposed to be sponsored by an olive oil company, with his face on billboards all over town. The producers nixed it because it seemed anachronistic, when in fact it was historically accurate.
I’ve heard that one actor (I think it was Gregory Peck) was taken to task for his moustache, which was thought to be anachronistic, but wasn’t. (Might have been the 1950 film The Gunfighter)
Much was made of Pete Rose being referred to as “rookie” in Good Morning, Vietnam, set in 1965. Rose was referred to as “All-Star Rookie”, likely a reference to his 1964 Topps baseball card and/or his first time as a National League All-Star.
When I worked for the Minnesota Historical Society at a site back in the 1980s, one of the tourists visiting the blacksmith’s shop was complaining they didn’t have nails that long ago (1827)!
The blacksmith’s reply was: “Yes, ma’am. And the Romans glued Jesus to the Cross.”
Back in the 1960s the American Comics Group comic Tales of Unknown Worlds ran a story about time travelers. When they are in the Middle Ages, one of them has recourse to a wheelbarrow, and finds himself marveling that the invention went that far back.
It did. Wjeelbarrows were used in C hina in the first few centuries CE, and they were in Europe by the 12th century. (THere’s no evidence of them in Classical Greece or Rome, though).
I was amused to find out that the original Greek Olympics were quite commercial. I always wondered how that worked. Did they really have billboards back then?
On the other hand, the Underground plays a key part in one of the stories - can’t recall the name - that hinges ultimately on a body being placed on the roof of an Underground carriage. Holmes spends a fair amount of time tromping around the rails, as I recall. So he wasn’t unaware of the Underground, wven if he preferred to travel by hansom cab.
It’s “The Bruce Partington Plans”-- I was just watching the Brett version yesterday. It is the Underground, although the train in question was running (and stopped) above ground behind a row of buildings at the point when the body was place atop it.
In episodes of Call the Midwife, which is set in the late 1950s, one of the pretty young nurses is occasionally seen using a little hand-held hairdryer of the type that I didn’t think were used until the 1970s… but they actually go back to the 1920s.
Brigham Young wore surprisingly brightly colored sunglasses (and he died in 1877). They’re still on exhibit at Lagoon Amusement Park and Pioneer Village outside Salt Lake City. I’ve seen other examples of colored glasses from the 19th century in various museums.
In the HBO series Rome, Ian McNeice played a newsreader who stood in a public place to make announcements. He mentioned sponsors when delivering these announcements and that seemed anachronistic, but apparently was not.
*Published *1927, yes, but set a lot earlier. According to Holmes chronologists, Holmes retired about 1903, and came out of retirement for His Last Bow, set on the eve of WW1. There was only one or two stories set between the two. Some of the last stories are of disputed date, but set certainly pre 1900. Not a lot of time to mention the cinema.
