On a recent episode of Mad Men, a character said “keep me in the loop.” Was that phrase really around in the 1960s? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “In the Loop”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Mark from San Diego.
Hi, Mark.
Hi, Mark. Welcome to the program.
Thank you.
What’s going on?
Not too much. I just had a question, as you might guess, about grammar and word usage.
Okay.
So my question relates to the show Mad Men.
I was watching a few weeks back when one of the characters said, keep me in the loop.
And that caught my ear because while the phrase is pretty ubiquitous in today’s business parlance, it seemed a little out of place for the early to mid-1960s.
So the question would essentially be, when did in the loop enter our common business parlance, and was it even around in the 1960s?
Okay, so are you one of those folks who watch the show and look for anachronisms?
Yeah, just whatever might be out of place for the period it set in.
Yeah, because they do claim that they are on target when it comes to the historical accuracy of the show, right?
Right.
Yeah, I think they work very hard at it.
Yeah, there are always going to be mistakes, but I think they do a pretty good job.
Yeah, I think so.
So, in the loop caught your ear.
Indeed.
Which season were you watching, and what year is it supposedly in the show?
Well, it was this current season, so they’ve already gone full-time to their new agency.
So, I think we’re getting into 1964 and 1965 by that time.
Okay, great, great.
In the loop could have been in their vocabulary in 1964 or 65.
Okay.
In the loop came into mainstream English through aviation engineering.
There was a period in the early 1960s, late 1950s, where the big discussion of aviation is how much control should a pilot cede to the computer?
Like, if you put it on autopilot, what is the role for the pilot?
And there was even in a Canadian journal at the time, somebody had this fabulous rant that ends with the lines, keep the pilot in the loop. Put not your trust in electronic boxes. We need human operators on the job.
And so it’s funny to read the journals at the time because they’re just talking.
They really believe that airplanes are this close to being completely run by computers so that the pilot’s almost not necessary.
Of course, we never completely have gone that far, but it was a big discussion at the time.
And so at least as early as 1968, in the loop begins to appear in mainstream popular texts outside of aviation engineering.
So I suspect that it was probably out there in the language even earlier than that.
I just simply haven’t found those uses.
That’s very interesting. I didn’t expect to hear the aviation component tied in. That’s very interesting.
Well, it’s really surprising.
Well, if you know anything about electronics, a loop is a very important part of all electronic circuits.
And so when they talk about the loop, they literally mean the electronic slash machine slash human loop.
How all of these systems, and that is treating the human pilot as a system, couple together to do the job at hand.
And that makes perfect sense even in today’s usage because it really means that you want to be kept informed or kept abreast of something, primarily, especially in the context of the scene in the show, if other people are doing the bulk of the work and you just want to stay informed as much as possible.
Right, exactly.
Exactly.
Yep, exactly right.
Exactly. So it sounds like they got in just under the wire.
Yeah, just under the wire. I think we’ll mark that one as okay. That’s just fine for them to use in the loop.
Okay, I think so. Thanks for answering the question.
Thanks for calling us, Mark.
Yeah, appreciate it.
Sure, bye-bye.
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