It was contemporary, not quaint old fashioned period!

One of my favorite things to look out for in movies, TV shows and stories is when something which, at the time it was made, was cutting edge and the best they had but now seen as old fashioned and period.  

What am I talking about... crazy old man... 

Okay, like:

In 1933, these were our F-18s!

In the original 1933 King Kong movie, those biplanes attacking King Kong aren't some sort of antique kitch.  Those were the best we had!  Those planes are the U.S. air superiority fighters of the day!  The movie makers were attacking Kong with the best weapons we had (just like we do in modern monster movies).  

Sherlock Holmes is another good example.  One of the creators of Sherlock (Mark Gatiss) was talking about how the original Sherlock Holmes was contemporary when it was made.  And he is totally right!  We now see Holmes as a Victorian character, living in the foggy 1880s murk of industrial era London.  But when Conan Doyle wrote the stories, they were occurring at the time they were written!  The serializing of Holmes in journals and magazines by Watson was as cutting-edge as Tumblr or Facebook is now.  There's a story (think it was "Adventure of the Dancing Men") where Holmes telegraphs a police captain in Chicago with a pertinent question.  That was really cutting edge!  For the 1880s-1890s, telegraphing a foreign city half a world away was probably more technological wizardly and mind boggling than texting is to us today.

What would you call this sort of thing?  Its not really a trope, or maybe it is.  Anyway, I'd love to compile or collect a list of these things someday.  Maybe if I get famous, I'll have all my readers chime in with examples.