Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for April 20, 2023

The word for today is “anachronism.”

Ida speaks like someone farther ahead than her years. They all should just leave right now, find a secluded spot and zap back to their own time. Too easy to damage the time line at this point.

Isn’t that General McClellan in Panel 1??

Or maybe, General Custer??

In reality, you might go back and view the past, but you cannot participate in it, it’s done and that’s it, so not to worry!

The iPhone wasn’t invented in the 1800’s.

So the doll encouraged this, and now realize what a stupid and short-sighted thing it is to do?

I’m kind of surprised that a six year-old has a cell phone even if her face looks like she’s in her late 30s.

No, it wouldn’t do much. Just don’t let them see you doing it. Don’t explain it.

ya think?

15 of 29 listed.

Understanding the iPhone is way, way beyond period science—as John W. Campbell pointed out back in the sixties, any chemist of the period would identify any transistor as simply a piece of impossibly pure silicon, and nothing else—but they did have photographs then. In fact, there is one photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg, although it’s unbelievably awful. The photographer probably had no idea that he had only two minutes. (The wet-plate process required that you mix the first chemicals, treat the glass plate with them, then shoot, then mix the development chemicals, and finally develop the plate. There was no such thing as a candid camera.)

For someone who is only a few years old and looks like a senior citizen the way she is drawn, Well I’ll Be seems to have far less common sense than her peers do.