The march of technology in Disney comics

[That Duckfan]

One thing that I find immensely fascinating is the passing of time in fiction by way of material culture. I'm currently doing a history series elsewhere, but of course Disney comics themselves are old enough to have seen plenty of technological change in their day. That's what this thread is all about. What are the earliest appearances of post-1928 technology in Disney comics?

I'll start: the earliest instance I know of a Disney character watching television is in YD 47-09-08 (published September 8, 1947). Another early example is Barks' Tunnel Vision (published February 22, 1949).

When did the first computer appear in Disney comics? Something tells me Bill Walsh likely used something of the sort in his scripts - but whether it was exactly a computer, I don't know.

More recently, Dutch Disney comics have created Duckburg equivalents of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I'm not sure when they were introduced.

[thorbjornmcduck]

In Denmark, weve had Duckburg equivalents of Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc. for many years! The names are usually wordplays like Andstagram (And means duck in danish)

[djnyr]

Barks depicts "electronic brains"--an early term for computers--in both the 1956 "Runaway Train" ten-pager and "The Money Well" (1958).

[Matilda]

Earliest cell phones? Few technological advances change *children's* experience of daily life as much as smartphones. For one thing, they make the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook much less magical and impressive. (Even though, as we know, the facts in the Guidebook are way more trustworthy than those on Wikipedia!) Also, cell phones greatly change the parameters of plot. It's an interesting exercise to watch or read older detective or police procedural tales and see which plots would have crumbled in the presence of cellphones.