Footnotes to the TV series
PARIS: I don’t have enough change.
RORY: Pay me later.
PARIS: What am I, your versateller?
A versateller is an automatic teller machine (ATM); the word was popularised by commercials for the Bank of America in the 1980s. Some people still prefer the word to the more common ATM. The name combines the French for “pay” with the word “teller” (usual American term for a cashier).
In this episode we see that Rory has a pager, which Lane contacts her on. In a later episode it is possible to see that it is an American Online (AOL) pager.
A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays messages, or receives voice messages sent from a telephone. They came into use in the 1950s, and became widespread during the 1980s. Their use declined markedly during the 2000s with the rise of mobile phones that allow text messaging and voicemail.
LORELAI: Well there’s no messages on the machine, Mom.
EMILY: I don’t leave messages. If I wanted to talk to a machine I’d talk to my VCR.
A VCR is a video cassette recorder, a device which records analog audio and video from television onto a magnetic tape cassette. First sold in the mid-1970s, they boomed during the 1980s and ’90s. At this time videos were widely available for sale or rental, and blank cassette tapes were sold so people could record TV shows. They declined after the release of DVDs in the 2000s.
