Out Of The Past

It seems appropriate that the Time Patrol, which guards the past, houses itself in dated surroundings. Patrol members have met in anachronistic hotels and one front for the Patrol is a used bookshop. Of the London office, 1890-1910, Anderson writes:

"There was a unexpectedly heavy effect to the oak furniture, the thick carpet, the flaring gas mantles. Electric lights were available, but Dalhousie & Roberts was a solid, conservative import house." ("Time Patrol" IN Time Patrol, p. 21)

Quite right! When initially contacting the London office, Everard, opening the message shuttle, found:

"...a sheet of foolscap covered with neat typing - yes, the typewriter had been invented by then, of course." (p. 19)

Would messages from earlier milieus have been handwritten? Patrol personnel would use future communication technology only when safely concealed from contemporary observation so maybe yes, handwritten notes even from earlier in the nineteenth century when:

"Herbert Ganz...liked being Herr Professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin..." in 1858 (pp. 399-400).