Election Day, Trailers, and the First Phone Call

10–25–16, Adil

Two facts this week, answering a couple of questions I’ve had recently. Plus a bonus I just came across and thought y’all would appreciate.

1. Why is election day always on a Tuesday? Congress decided to pick a uniform election day in 1845. In 1845, American society mainly consisted of tons of farmers. In this agrarian, religious society, you couldn’t vote (or do anything) on Sunday because it interfered with the Sabbath. Using a horse-drawn carriage, it took farmers a full day to reach the “city” to vote. So, after the Sabbath, they would ride for the county seat on Monday and arrive on Tuesday to cast their votes. Then, they could ride back in time for Wednesday, which was “market day” in most towns when farmers sold their crops. Alas, Tuesday was chosen as the day, and it hasn’t changed since. Note: it technically isn’t the first Tuesday of November; it’s actually the first Tuesday after a Monday in November. This is to prevent the election from falling on November 1, which would have made the period from election day to the first Wednesday in December (the day when the actual electors met in state capitals to cast the vote) 34 days in some cases — a violation of Electoral Law. The new rule made it so that this gap was always 29 days.
2. Why are movie trailers called “trailers?” It turns out that this term used to make sense: indeed, they used to be shown in theaters at the end of movies, not before. The first reported trailer was in a 1912 NY-area amusement park, where after the show, there was a short addendum which basically said, “Will our main character escape the lion’s den? See next week’s thrilling chapter!” So, this piece of film literally “trailed” the main show. Obviously, when using trailers to advertise for sequels, it makes more sense to show them after the first installation in a series. The style was expanded to non-sequels and benefited from improved effects (e.g. “wipe effects”, gasp) in the coming decades. Additionally, trailers may have started for another interesting reason: to get people out of the theater. Back in the day, you didn’t pay for each movie you watched. Instead, you’d just pay one fee to enter, and you could stay as long as you wanted. So trailers were used after movies to break up the hypnosis of continuous entertainment and make room for new people to enter. In the ’30s, they figured out that more people would actually watch the trailer if you put it before the movie everyone came to see. But, the term “trailer” stuck.
3. Bonus: the first phone call ever made was by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper on April 3, 1973. To whom? Naturally, he used this historic moment for an epic troll: with the first ever cell phone call, he contacted rival engineer Joel Engel at AT&T (the primary phone provider at the time) and just said (paraphrasing), “I’m calling you with a cell phone.” This was done while walking down the street, as a demo for a journalist. Fkin lol.

Ya boi Martin holding a copy of the OG cell phone he used