I suppose I could go into various topics such as racism and sexism, some of which were more or less accurately depicted in the movie, but I will leave that discussion for a different blog. I wish to focus on the small, but blaring (to me, at least) anachronism in the film.
It was really small. So small, in fact, I wonder just how many people actually caught it. Sure, I bet a few nerds did, but I'm also willing to bet most did not. If you've seen the movie, did you catch it? And if you haven't seen it, well, then, just be aware that what I'm about to relay is technically a 'spoiler' - so you have been warned.
Last chance to stop reading before the spoiler is revealed.
OK, so here it is: during the scene where there is a news broadcast** talking about (I think) Yuri Gagarin's flight in 1961, the news announcer make reference to "UTC" ("Universal Time Coordinated"). And while UTC was actually informally adopted for the first time in January of 1960, the official English name and abbreviation of "UTC" was not adopted until 1967 (and even then it's highly doubtful it would have been used in television broadcasts). An English-speaking news broadcaster - especially an American broadcaster - would at best use "GMT" ("Greenwich Mean Time") if not "Eastern time" or "Moscow time".
Even today, we have instances where people use "GMT", even though "UTC" is the officially adopted, current standard for "Zulu†". I suspect people still use "GMT" because it has been around for a long, long time (it's been around since 1847, at least, though was not legally adopted in Britain until 1880) and it's hard to break habits. That and because it's not really taught in American schools. But then, I know of a few Brits who still use "GMT" instead of "UTC" as well, so...
In any case, as I said; a small anachronism, but a very obvious one to me‡.
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* As with many 'period' films, there are several more than just this one. Many have to do with the cars used, and not being a motor-head, I tend to ignore those anyway. But this one I caught and being the nerd that I am, I have to point it out.
** Did you know that "broadcast" when used to describe television signals technically means a "black and white" signal? And "colorcast" is the technical, proper name for a color broadcast? Of course, today with 'colorcasts' being the norm, as with many original terms 'broadcast' has been adopted to indicate a generic over-the-air television signal, regardless of 'color' content.
† "Zulu" is the international phonetic alphabet representation of "Z" (that's "Zee" for most Americans, while British and Canadians call it "Zed"). The "Z" time zone is UTC + 0 ("Zero") or "Zero time" or "Z-time"; hence "Zulu-time" or just "Zulu". It is most often used by military, though some of us nerds use it, too.
‡ But then, I also know about "long scale" and "short scale" when it comes to integer values greater than 999,999,999 (i.e. less than "one Thousand Million"). Which can be very confusing when large numbers are discussed between many Europeans and Americans.
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