Last night I came across a meme on Facebook: A picture of an old rotary phone captioned “I wonder if my parent’s generation stood in line for this phone?” or something along those lines. Of course the answer to that specific question is no, because back then you rented your phone from the phone company and you just got whatever phone they provided.
But that got me thinking, while people from my parent’s generation (baby boomers) didn’t line up specifically for a phone, they probably stood in line for something. I know the practice of lining up for concert tickets days before they go on sale long predates the iPhone craze. What is the first documented case of people lining up to buy something long before it went on sale?
I’m not sure it’s the earliest example, and didn’t involve lining up, but allegedly large crowds gathered at the docks in New York to wait for the ship delivering the final installment of Dicken’s Old Curiosity Shop (which was published in weekly installments) in 1841.
Nitpick, but you had a couple of choices back then. You could have a 500-series phone of course, but there was also the Princess phone and the Trimline phone.
Not that anyone can answer this but back in hunter-gatherer days, did people line up when Og brought back a dead beast? Presumably at least those in the British isles did so.
OTOH, I can imagine some locals going very early to get a good spot along the procession route of a recently dead pharaoh. Problem is finding documentation for that.
If the OP wants to keep it to multi-day and non-essential things, then I can attest that for at least 40 years or more, students at some universities camped out for multiple days to get season tickets to the school’s hockey or other games.
I was indeed thinking mainly in terms of non-essential things, so I wouldn’t count the bread lines in France or the lines in the Soviet Union, as those were for basic staples. I was thinking of things more in the spirit of the meme that inspired the thread, with people lining up to get something popular but not essential (like the latest iPhone).
Even if not an actual line, per se, I’d say people crowding the docks for Old Curiosity Shop would be a good example. And I thought of the Cabbage Patch dolls, but I didn’t mention it because I was sure it wasn’t the first example.
The queue for Wimbledon tickets dates back to the end of WW1. You can queue for day tickets for all the main courts (except for the last four days on Centre Court) at bargain prices. The queue which extends to over 7,000 people starts forming up to 40 hours before the time. Some people have been doing it every year for decades and it is more like an extended picnic-cum-garden party than a serious queue.
If you’re talking about mania manufactured by modern advertising, the closest historical analogy is probably in the realm of religion. With a little digging, I’m sure we could find ancient accounts of people lined up for days for an audience/blessing/healing/prophecy or some other hokum from a “holy person”. I’m sure those people of yore would disagree with me that what they were waiting for was nonessential, but so too would many people waiting in line for an iPhone.
I wonder how long Romans waited in line to see events at the Colosseum? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available* but I doubt they waited for days.
*According to my exhaustive research, which consisted of skimming the wikipedia article.
