Over one hundred years ago, English cartoonist and caricaturist W. K. Haselden poked fun at “pocket telephones.”
He was known for being ahead of his time. His daily cartoons on the fads, fashions, foibles, and follies of the age soon earned him a large following. His style was gentle, and subtle and his tone conservative. His targets were the upper-middle-class householder and his family. His pioneering work with the large single frame divided into four or more panels connected by a single theme gave him the title, according to his Times obituary, ‘the father of British strip cartoon’.
His ‘pocket phones’ cartoon was published in The Daily Mirror on 5 March 1919. According to Wikipedia, “Haselden often lampooned social and technological trends of the time by making bold predictions about how the future would transpire, including fashion, camera phones, and feminism.”
The comic strip is titled “When We All Have Pocket
Pretty accurate, huh? He didn’t foresee the ability to turn the phone to silent mode or, even, that you could turn it off. Telephones”.