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That 1963 Flip-Top Flip-Phone... FACT TREK

If it were the Navy, first you'd have to prove somehow that the Captain's body was hijacked by a crazy woman, so he wasn't to blame for the unlawful orders she gave. Then you'd have to prove somehow that the switch had been reversed. The authorities would be like, "The first switch sounds highly improbable, and the second sounds awfully convenient. You need a lawyer, Captain."

"I ask that this court be reconvened in the spooky chamber of a long-dead civilization!"
 
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What movie or tv show is that image from?
 
Man, if you think Captain Kirk getting his brain flipped out, think about Captain Crane!
That guy was getting possessed by aliens, ghosts, sea monsters every week!
Nelson should never have trusted him with the Seaview, except that he was getting the treatment too!
 
Those Italian phones do look like something you'd find in the Village.

That was my first thought, but these are even cooler. I never really liked those Village phones, because they were so rigid and angular. These have a more elegant shape, and they actually flip open and closed. (And they'd go really well with Number Two's spherical chair.)
 
Also, I always wondered if the Village all-handset phones might be a little heavy, '60s tech and all. I believe they were actually from an office intercom system; probably not intended for lengthy conversations.
 
I remember watching an old GM commercial on C-SPAN not long ago…on the subject of design, which seemed to change very quickly. Each decade of the 20th Century had its own feel…and I think that was because of design. We seem stuck in the 90’s 2000s now.

The late 80’s even had a different feel from the early 80’s. Now of course, all cars look like an Audi or a Taurus.

I think the movie 2001 served as a target and that…once reached, well….there was a falling away. We got 9/11, not A Space Odyssey…and style I think took a knife to the belly as so-called cozy-futurism fell before misrablism.
 
I don't think that's necessarily the case. Maybe general automotive design hasn't had a radical shift (and even that's debatable) but a lot of consumer goods look a lot different than in the aughts.
 
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Design changes have slowed dramatically. 50 years later, we're still flying 747 Jumbo Jets that were designed as a stop gap that could be converted into a freighter when the SST Supersonic Transports came along. Imagine flying a Wright Flyer in the 1950s? Or a WWI Curtis Jenny in 1969 when we were going to the moon?

But, that's aircraft. Computers is a different story. A 10 year old desk top is one thing. A 10 year old Laptop is another. A 10 year old cell phone still another.
 
All that's true of just about anything. Some designs get fixed because they're fairly optimal for a given technological level, i.e. commercial jets. But on the flipside compare a 1960s designed fighter to anything current and they look entirely different.
 
Oh, that is a lovely little phone! On the one hand, it looks way too modern for the '60s (heck, it looks like a computer mouse when shut), but at the same time, it looks exactly like something you'd see in a '60s sci-fi movie set in the future.
It really doesn't look "too modern," though; those of us who were actually there remember things like this quite clearly -- items like it were popping up all the time (most to be quickly forgotten again as soon as the next excitingly-shaped, brightly-colored thing appeared.)

Also: how do you suppose the makers of future-set '60s sci-fi movies & TV shows acquired a lot of their props? Certainly not by designing them all in-house (which would have been far too costly and time-consuming for anyone working under budget and deadline constraints.) No, they obtained those "futuristic" objects by buying up designs just like this one before they'd become widely-known and widely-distributed*.


Everyone makes fun of this shot now, because the item in question has long since become ubiquitous, but -- at the time the episode was written, produced and aired -- they were not yet in common usage, and would not become so for several years. The spray-bottle top everyone would have been accustomed to seeing at that time looked like this.

What's "too modern" for a particular time is trickier to call when one has not in fact experienced the particular time in question.
 
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It really doesn't look "too modern," though; those of us who were actually there remember things like this quite clearly -- things like it were popping up all the time (most to be quickly forgotten again as soon as the next excitingly-shaped, brightly-colored thing appeared.)

Wow, way to take one phrase out of context. If you'll review the entire paragraph you quoted, you'll understand that I was speaking figuratively. I was commenting on how interesting it was that it looked both modern and perfectly '60s at the same time.
 
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The F-15 was designed in the 1960s.
It's still a front line fighter.
What the hell does that have to do with anything? It was designed THEN, fighters designed NOW look different. That's the point. That's like dismissing the design of the B-2 bomber because ancient B-52s (not the band) are still in use.
 
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