# Unintentionally funny scenes in old movies due to "cutting edge" technology **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 14, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025 "2004-04-14T20:02:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/41 "2004-04-15T12:42:04Z")
> [@](#): > > In no less a movie than 2001: A Space Oddysey, the digital displays used the glowing filament technology that was completely obsolete about 3-4 years after the movie came out. Yeah, Nixie Tubes. But, IIRC, there aren’t any in **2001**. I’m a big fan of the film, and I can’t recall seeing any in the film. Exactly where are they? In fact, the point has been made that **2001** looks more futuristic than the much later **2010**. The latter used actual CRT displays, which _look_ like CRT displays. in **2001** they “matted in” displays, sometimes onto flat surfaces, so a lot of the displays look like high-definition flatscreens. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/42 "2004-04-15T12:43:01Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **Lamia** : Well, it would have been expensive to make color screens just for those shots, feed them color images (which, at the time, meant taking pictures of something with a color TV camera), and make the end result look like something good on screen. Why would they need to make computer screens at all? I’m sure most of the computers in old movies were just boxes without any actual hardware (in some it’s quite obvious that this is the case), so they could have just rigged up a box with a TV inside. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/43 "2004-04-15T13:16:03Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Star Trek TOS: Their main computer is not as good at voice synthesis as a Commodore 64. ( **all com pu tors and ro bots must speak in a high ly ar ti fi cial man ner** ) Which is how Stephen Hawking’s on-the-fly voice generator sounds today. Do you have a point? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/44 "2004-04-15T13:35:48Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ve got one…remember the movie Aliens? Remember the part where Ripley is comforting Newt, telling her that the lab they’re staying in is safe, and she points out the security camera in the corner of the room? No, that is quite correct. Its been shown that one of the cheapest and most effective security devices is a big, obvious camera in plain sight. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/45 "2004-04-15T13:42:07Z")
When I see it, I always think that the “faxing” scene from **Die Hard 2** is rather quaint. The movie came out in 1990, as I recall, when fax machines were still quite the novelty. Unlike today, where every modem has fax capability built in. I don’t think they even had modems faster than 2400 back then, did they? I also have to wonder if a fax machine from that era would have the resolution necessary to send a clear image of a fingerprint. Even today, that kind of thing doesn’t work all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/46 "2004-04-15T14:06:58Z")
The cal comedy _Just Imagine_ (1930) takes place in The New York of 1980—everyone talks on two-way television phones. What I found oddly realistic is, they kept shorting and getting interference from other signals! ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/47 "2004-04-15T14:10:04Z")
> [@Max Torque](#): > > The movie came out in 1990, as I recall, when fax machines were still quite the novelty. I worked in an office in the early 1980s (in NYC, admittedly) and we had a fax machine. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/48 "2004-04-15T14:28:38Z")
> [@pilot141](#): > > One thing that amazes me is that almost everyone completely missed the evolution of flat-screen technology. Cathode-ray tubes? Yeah, those will be what we’ll be putting on starships two hundred years from now! The CRT will never be obsolete! Never! The cold light of an LCD is no substitute for the warming glow of the cathode ray tube. The world has been going to robot hell in a handbasket since they stopped manufacturing television sets with screens whose phosphors emit a ghostly green light when turned off. I’m going to go hug my Sony Triniton now. Re Doctor Who Future technology varies. Remember that in soem episodes, it’s explicitly said that various technologies have been lost and rediscovered. A human colony might be using a vacuum tube computer with an open reel tape drive, because most of the original settler’s records and technology were destroyed by civil war, earthquakes, or Daleks. ---
**Author:** ![av8rmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@av8rmike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/av8rmike)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/49 "2004-04-15T14:46:46Z")
Seen in any of the incarnations of _Dick Tracy_, and to a lesser degree, Star Trek movies I and II: wrist radios. It’s a rather quaint idea that has never really caught on, until now, when I heard several companies were trying to market such a product. Though I guess it’s no less amusing than the idea of cell-phone headsets, where people can walk down the street talking to seemingly no one at all. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/50 "2004-04-15T14:50:02Z")
> [@pilot141](#): > > Ahem…but in that same movie ( **ST II:Wrath of Khan** ), check out Kirk’s computer in his San Fran apartment. It reminds me of a TRS-80, but I’m sure it’s something similar. The ULTIMATE machine for the swinging starship captain of today!! I think it’s a Commodore 64 but his room is filled with antiques. (the hole I’m too old theme in the beginning of the film is reflected in his decor) One of my favorite things about Superman is the newsroom. Eveyone is using typewriters. In Leathal Weapon Danny Glover has a pretty big cell phone. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/51 "2004-04-15T15:04:52Z")
> [@av8rmike](#): > > Seen in any of the incarnations of _Dick Tracy_, and to a lesser degree, Star Trek movies I and II: wrist radios. It’s a rather quaint idea that has never really caught on, until now, when I heard several companies were trying to market such a product. Dick Tracy no longer wears a two way wrist radio. He now wears a wrist genie. IIRC He got it in the early nineties. Besides being a radio and a celular phone, the wrist genie contains a miniaturized computer with lcd. The wrist genie takes mini cds roughly the size of a quarter. I haven’t read the strip in years now, so I don’t know what if anything makes the wrist genie better than a PalmPilot or various models from Nokia or Nextel. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/52 "2004-04-15T16:00:42Z")
I’m surprised that, with all the Star Trek TOS references, nobody has yet mentioned Spock’s science station viewer. He doesn’t have a flat screen monitor, or even an LCD; it’s more like an antique mutoscope from the early 1900s. What about the five screen televisions in the original Rollerball? Some retro tech found even in today’s movies and television shows - seems like most computers are equipped with the wonderfully clicky IBM Type M keyboard. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/53 "2004-04-15T16:18:33Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > What about the five screen televisions in the original Rollerball? I thought Multivision sets had four screens myself, but I know what you mean. I wouldn’t so much call those funny as an alternate solution to a problem now solved with splitscreen. I can very much see _24_ formatted for Multivision, and it would be pretty damn good. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/54 "2004-04-15T16:45:50Z")
I think that thing Spock was always looking into was a pretty smart move on the part of the producers. He could look in there and describe something thus obviating the need to show it with some expensive special effect. As far as flat panel TV screens go, Francois Truffaut got that right back in 1966 in Fahrenheit 451. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/55 "2004-04-15T17:01:22Z")
_The Firm_ with Tom Cruise and Wilford Brimley. There’s one scene where the bad lawyers are getting a fax about Tom Cruise, and how he’s on to them. However, it was one of those fax machines that used thermal paper, not plain paper. So the fax printed out, curled up into a tube, and rolled under the cabinet, allowing Our Hero more time to make his escape. Thermal paper fax machines were around for what, 10 whole minutes? ---
**Author:** ![haardvark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@haardvark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/haardvark)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/56 "2004-04-15T17:45:39Z")
I remember watching the movie _Blow Up_ in film studies class, and during the discussion afterwards everyone wanted to know “what was up with the guy’s walkie-talkie in his car? is he an undercover cop or something? what was all that stuff that he was saying?” And the teacher pointed out that the point was, the protagonist was such an up-and-comer that he had this dash-mounted radio message service, bleeding edge technology, and what was actually said, what it was used for in the movie, was entirely irrelevant once his hip, swinging high-tech-ness had been conveyed. I think most of the class thought the prof was joking. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![misshannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3e96dc/32.png) [@misshannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/misshannah)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/57 "2004-04-15T17:51:17Z")
My favorite part of _Hackers_ is when the boys at the l337 party crowd around Angelina Jolie’s computer because she has a ::gasp:: **28.8kbps** modem!! ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/58 "2004-04-15T18:23:44Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > So, if I’m making a contemporary movie, should I avoid showing any state-of-the art consumer electronics, because twenty years in the future some smartass will laugh at it? We’re not laughing at it, we’re laughing _with_ it. But thanks for saying we’re all a bunch of smartasses. How’s the view from up there? :rolleyes: As far as books go, I remember the first time I read Vonnegut’s Player Piano - with all the vacuum tubes and huge computers being described, it took me a while to realize that it was supposed to be set in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/59 "2004-04-15T18:59:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Yeah, Nixie Tubes. But, IIRC, there aren’t any in **2001**. I’m a big fan of the film, and I can’t recall seeing any in the film. Exactly where are they? It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so I don’t recall specifically. It’s in at least one of the spaceships, though. Your note actually had me doubting my memory, but when I googled for “2001 odyssey nixie tube” I found enough offhand mentions to reassure me. No smoking-gun stills, though. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/60 "2004-04-15T21:34:46Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > If it’s set in the late 1970s, why would an 8-track tape be out of place? The '70s were the heyday of the 8-track. Actually, it could well be the mid or early 1970’s. Heston is watching “Woodstock” at the movie theater at the beginning of the film. “They don’t make movie’s like this anymore”. I agree I don’t understand why 8-tracks are out of place. Everything in the movie indicates it takes place in the 1970’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025.md?page=4)