Mad Men Question

[MVT ATLANTA]

I've been binge watching and it's been great as it brings back memories of my childhood but I had a question regarding technology and products.

In season 4 in some of the middle episodes there have been shots inside of the office bathrooms. A couple of things jumped out as being wrong for the period:

1) The paper towel despenser. I remember the cloth towels on the roller as being the choice. They had the small trifolded paper towels.

2) Electric hand dryer. Know I'm not sure about the above but I'm pretty sure that the electric hot air blowers weren't around back then.

Has anyone caught any other errors like this in the show?

 

[goldmom]

Season 4? Earlier 60's - yes they were around.

 

[goldmom]

Some old school places still had cloth rollers but an ad agency that relies on always being on the frontier of new would have not stayed old school IMO.

 

[OrlandNole]

Trust goldmom on this one. She was there.

 

[Bartdog]

Wow, I had forgotten all about the cloth looping hand drying towels. I always wondered if they cycled through and the section I was using had already been used by someone else.

 

[Nole Lou]

By the mid 70s, the only places I ever saw the towel rollers were some gas stations and some sports arenas. It was already rare as to be noticeable by then. So my guess is at a place like a Manhattan ad agency, they were past that in the early 60s and had paper towels. Don't know about air dryers though.

 

[MVT ATLANTA]

That's what I've been stewing about. I can get behind the paper towel despenser but I remember when the air dryers came out.
I was born the early 60s so I don't remember much detail stuff later in the decade, but it seems the air dryers may have come out when I was in college around the early 80s.
I could be wrong but it certainly jumped out to me. Anybody notice anything else that may not belong in the era?
I love the show BTW, brings backs tons of TV and commercial memories.

 

[FSUTribe76]

That's what I've been stewing about. I can get behind the paper towel despenser but I remember when the air dryers came out.
I was born the early 60s so I don't remember much detail stuff later in the decade, but it seems the air dryers may have come out when I was in college around the early 80s.
I could be wrong but it certainly jumped out to me. Anybody notice anything else that may not belong in the era?
I love the show BTW, brings backs tons of TV and commercial memories.

I was born mid70s so I didnt have first hand info, but I looked it up out of curiousity.

The first commercial handryers came out in 1921 and were called Airdry Electric Towels. Here's a 1928 model you can see a pic of.

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=airdry-the-electric-towel&page=detail&id=71714

Other manufacturers such as sanidry also were out in the 20s.

http://www.obnoxiousantiques.com/inventory/1920s-art-deco-industrial-hand-dryer-2/

By the 40s, they were wall mounted units that looked very similar to what you saw ten years ago.

http://www.urbanremainschicago.com/...-enameled-sani-dri-curved-top-hand-dryer.html

So even though you can look online and they claim 1948 is when the hand dryer was invented by George Clemens...the Internet is a lie. He just popularized it and invented the shape (box plus curved air funnel on the side) that was used for decades.

So basically in the 20s handryers were bleeding edge technology like you'd find in the Apple HQ now. But by the 40s there were multiple manufacturers and by the late 40s it had really taken off. By the 50s, they would have been all over sophisticated NYC and it probably did take another ten to twenty years to make it to the south.

 

[FSUTribe76]

By the late 50s, the handdryers had even evolved past the simple forms that are still in use even today and here's an example of a "spaceage" late 50s heavily stylized model.


http://www.thearchitecturalforum.com/retro-1950s-vintage-hand-dryer-63480.html