It seems like from what I've researched that the vast majority of Africans, at least half of the people in rural China, many if not most Southeast Asians, most people in India and a significant minority of Latin Americans did not have electricity in their homes in the 1980s. Many others had only token or intermittent amounts of electricity, just barely enough to turn the lights on sometimes or perhaps power a black and white TV if they were lucky.

So were nearly half of human beings essentially living in the 19th century in 1985? Did rural Third Worlders who were off the grid use battery-powered items such as radios and flashlights? Did other portable electronics such as cameras penetrate these parts of the world?

I suppose it's possible my numbers are an overestimate, but I'm pretty confident in them. I know that Thailand for example wasn't electrified outside of the Bangkok area until the 1980s, and 40% of rural Chinese were still using kerosene lamps even into the early 1990s.

For comparison, about 12% of the world's population lacks electric power in their homes now. But I'd imagine a lot of those people still have cell phones.