Guess the year #1
Pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a little trip back in time with us.
A round-headed boy and his friends first turned up on the funny pages, in a modest seven newspapers.
The Lazy Bones remote let you change channels from your armchair, as long as you stayed within reach of its wire.
Regular gasoline averaged about 27 cents a gallon, a figure that now looks like a typo.
What year do you think this is?
Show the answer
Answer: 1950. The Peanuts gang made its newspaper debut that October, and Zenith's wired Lazy Bones remote arrived the same year, while regular gas averaged just under 27 cents a gallon.
Sources:
- https://schulzmuseum.org/about-schulz/
- https://earlytelevision.org/remotes.html
- https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec5_59.pdf
Guess the year #2
Here's a fun little time-travel puzzle for you to mull over with your morning coffee.
Census takers knocking on doors asked households, for the first time ever, whether they owned a television set.
A brand-new charge card let diners eat at a couple dozen New York restaurants and settle the bill later.
The comic strip Peanuts made its debut in just seven newspapers.
A new TV panel game, What's My Line?, had its premiere, with panelists guessing each contestant's job.
What year do you think it is?
Show the answer
Answer: 1950. The census was the first to ask families if they owned a TV, and Diners Club launched its charge card that February. What's My Line? premiered on CBS that same month, and Peanuts first ran in seven newspapers that October.
Sources:
- https://www.archives.gov/press/press-kits/1950-census-fact-sheet
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_My_Line%3F
Guess the year #3
Pour a cup of coffee, settle into your favorite chair and see if these clues take you back.
A brand-new card lets New York diners eat now and settle up later with "the club," which is a big step up from washing the dishes.
One TV maker sells a remote called Lazy Bones, tied to the set by a wire, so nobody has to get up to change the channel.
A new comic strip called Peanuts starts out modestly, in just seven newspapers.
A first-class letter still goes anywhere in the country for a three-cent stamp, the same as it has for years.
Which year do you think it is?
Show the answer
Answer: 1950. The Diners Club card started in February 1950, Zenith brought out its wired Lazy Bones TV remote the same year, and Peanuts first ran in seven newspapers that October. The three-cent stamp lasted from 1932 to 1958, so it fits too.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts
- https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/domestic-letter-rates-since-1863.pdf
Guess the year #4
This year the living room, the telephone and even the family car all got a little bit smarter, and so did the government's adding machines.
A new Monday-night sitcom called I Love Lucy debuts on CBS, and living rooms everywhere settle in to laugh.
A New Jersey customer dials a long-distance call across the country with no operator, which saves a lot of polite chitchat.
The Census Bureau accepts its first UNIVAC, an electronic computer that cannot be bribed with coffee or cake.
Chrysler offers power steering called Hydraguide on its Imperial, so parallel parking stops counting as a workout.
Which year do you think this is?
Show the answer
Answer: 1951. I Love Lucy premiered on CBS that October, the first customer-dialed coast-to-coast call went through from Englewood, New Jersey, in November, the Census Bureau accepted its UNIVAC in March, and Chrysler's Imperial introduced Hydraguide power steering.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Lucy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_distance_dialing
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_steering
