And as the standard of comfort rose, as the complexity of the mechanism of living increased life in the country had become more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. The disappearance of vicar and squire, the extinction of the general practitioner by the city specialist, had robbed the village of its last touch of culture. After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book,schoolmaster, and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage. In the country were neither means of being clothed nor fed (according to the refined conceptions of the time),no efficient doctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits.
He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees."You lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical --the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now --" He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold -- a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
HG Wells, 1899