I know a semi-fictional story like this doesn't need to be 100% factual in it's depictions, but I was just curious - to those from times back then: did they have digital scoreboards in rural Indiana high school gyms in early 1950's?
I also wondered about African American coaches (even in big-city Indianapolis or South Bend) - of that era.
-Gil
Life is a sexually transmitted terminal diseaseshare
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Sure! They weren't realy "digital" by todays standards. Each scoring number on the board basicly had 18 or so lightbulbs with a red lens on the front.
shareIn Indiana in 1952, the only black coaches would have been found at all-black schools such as Indianapolis Crispus Attucks. So the movie does take some liberty in showing a black coach leading an integrated team. Reportedly the first African-American to coach at an integrated school in Indiana was Johnny Wilson at Indianapolis Wood in the late '50s.
shareLightbulb-style scoreboards were invented in the 1930s. As shown in the movie, some of them had dial-type clocks and only the real expensive ones had actual digital countdown clocks as are common today.
It probably would have been somewhat rare for a hooterville school such as Hickory to have electric scoreboards in 1952, but remember also basketball was a quasi-religion at the time and they would probably have spent the money to get one.
I can see Myra Fleener talking to Cletus, "OK we need new math books this year. A new set for the whole school will cost $500."
Cletus: "One of them new jim-dandy electric scoreboards costs $495. We'll let the math books wait a couple years."
Digital scoreboards as opposed to what? Analog scoreboards???
Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.
In REAL old-time basketball (1900s-1920s), they kept the score with cardboard or wood flip-number scoreboards.
The game time was kept by the ref on the court with a stopwatch. He would usually yell out how much time was left at every clock stoppage.
Some schools also did have analog clocks which were reset manually each quarter.
Since there were 8 minutes in every quarter, at the beginning of the quarter you reset your clock for 11:52.00. When the clock strikes 12:00.0, the quarter is over.
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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.
I remember going to football games at the L.A. Coliseum in the early 1960s and it still had a big analogue clock keeping game time. My high school had a score board that had multiple openings in the front, each about one foot square. A couple of guys would be behind the board, standing on a catwalk, and they would hang numbers painted on black plywood squares so they showed through the openings.
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