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→Time setting
==Time setting==
==Time setting==
The novel gives no clue to its setting in time. Current plans for the film adaptation (see below) call for it to be set during the middle of the 1920s.<ref name=imdb>"Entry for ''Atlas Shrugged''," Internet Movie Database, accessed April 21, 2009. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/></ref>
The novel does not state when it is set in time. That is, it gives no years. An earlier (since abandoned) plan for the film adaptation (see below) called for setting it during the middle of the 1920s.<ref name=imdb>"Entry for ''Atlas Shrugged''," Internet Movie Database, accessed April 21, 2009. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/></ref> But
The novel provides these clues to deciding what were the most likely years during which the action takes place:
The novel provides these clues to deciding what were the most likely years during which the action takes place:
# The novel depicts the first use of [[Diesel]]-electric [[locomotive]]s in [[railroad]]ing. This is the clue that the Internet Movie Database mentions.<ref name=imdb/>
# The novel depicts the first use of [[Diesel]]-electric [[locomotive]]s in [[railroad]]ing. This is the clue that the Internet Movie Database mentions.<ref name=imdb/>
# Railroads are the primary mode of overland transport.
# Railroads are the primary mode of overland transport.
# [[Airline]] service is still a projected service of the novel's future, and [[monoplane]]s are something new.
# [[Airline]] service is relatively new—and fails miserably during the novel. (Airlines would not displace passenger rail travel until the 1970s, with the formation of the [[National Rail Passenger Corporation]], or "Amtrak.") [[Monoplane]]s seem new, but that might reflect Ayn Rand's lack of command of the English language.
# [[Telephone]] service was well-established in this era, but had not achieved universal penetration. In one key scene, a low-level foreman complains to Dagny Taggart that most of the men whom she orders him to contact do not have telephone service where they live.
# [[Telephone]] service was well-established in this era, but had not achieved universal penetration. (Or perhaps telephone service has begun to fail.) In one key scene, a low-level foreman complains to Dagny Taggart that most of the men whom she orders him to contact do not have telephone service where they live.
# [[Radio]] was the ubiquitous mass medium of the day. [[Television]] was something new and exotic, and had not achieved anything remotely approaching universal penetration. If this seems an anachronism, it was not: some inventors had actually experimented with television prior to the [[Great Depression]], but obviously could not sell something as new and expensive as television when the country was, quite simply, "broke."
# [[Radio]] was the ubiquitous mass medium of the day. [[Television]] was something new and exotic, and had not yet achieved universal penetration.
# [[Telegraph]]y, being much cheaper than full-duplex long-distance telephony, was still a prominent method of communication.
# [[Telegraph]]y, being much cheaper than full-duplex long-distance telephony, was still a prominent method of communication.
# The [[United States Navy]] is definitely not the powerful presence on the high seas that it is today, because the combined forces of the Navy are powerless to stop a single [[privateer]] from hijacking every government-ordered relief cargo sent to various "People's States."
# The [[United States Navy]] is definitely not the powerful presence on the high seas that it is today, or even during [[World War II]]. The combined forces of the Navy are powerless to stop a single [[privateer]] from hijacking every government-ordered relief cargo sent to various "People's States."
# Every nation in the world, except the United States of America, is called "People's State of" whatever.
# Every nation in the world, except the United States of America, is called "People's State of" whatever.
# The great "strike of the men of the mind" begins with a single engineer at a plant whose new owners abruptly decide to manage it according to the principles, such as they are, set forth in [[The Communist Manifesto]].
# The great "strike of the men of the mind" begins with a single engineer at a plant whose new owners abruptly decide to manage it according to the principles, such as they are, set forth in [[The Communist Manifesto]].