The scene: iPhone Day. I was near the end of a 13-hour wait. At around 5 p.m., 12 hours into my iPhone vigil, friendly security guards moved the line east down 58th Street then north onto Fifth Avenue into a steel barricaded holding pattern on the sidewalk in front of the crystal Apple Cube in New York City.

Across the street was the famous Plaza Hotel, currently undergoing reconstructive surgery in a transformation into tony condos. Standing amidst every other feverish geek in the tri-state area, our every eccentric move recorded by a battalion of TV cameras, all waiting for a glimpse of a touchscreen, my sleep-deprived mind wandered back 44 years to another scene of mass hysteria. The Beatles stayed at the Plaza when they first came to the U.S. in February 1964. Right across Fifth Avenue from the current scene of hysteria stood every feverish teenaged girl in the tri-state area, their every eccentric move recorded by a battalion of TV cameras, all screaming in anticipation of a glimpse of a mop top.

And it hit me. Steve Jobs is an unabashed Beatles fan. Beatlemania. iPhonemania. Is there a connection? Would I be writing this if I didn't think there was? Read on.

First, a disclaimer: I am an Apple fan. I bought a Fat Mac back in 1984, I wrote the aforelinked blogs on a black MacBook and I'm currently writing this on a Mac G5. I own a Windows laptop only because I need to as a gadget reviewer.

I am also a tech historian. I am old enough to remember every landmark technology since the introduction of color TV in the mid-1960s and have covered them since the CD was introduced in 1982. In other words, I've seen and covered a lot of revolutionary gadgets and technologies.

And I, like Jobs, am also old enough to remember Beatlemania and the impact that band had — and continues to have — on multiple generations. Back in the late 1970s, Jobs and fellow Fab Four fan Steve Wozniak named their nascent computer company after The Beatles' record label. When Jobs held up the iPhone at MacWorld last January, the cover of Sgt. Pepper's adorned its glass screen. In addition to the name, did Jobs consciously or subconsciously adopt any buzz-generating marketing lessons from The Beatles' meteoric rise?

In a recent column on the Apple hype machine, Business 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote: "Through clever stagecraft, massive advertising buys, carefully calibrated releases of information (and on occasion misinformation), and the coddling of a handful of influential reporters, Jobs has created level of consumer interest and anticipation never before seen for an electronic device." That nearly perfectly describes Capitol's 1964 rushed game plan to hype an unknown British band.

When The Beatles landed at the newly christened JFK Airport on February 7th, 1964, the four boys were stunned at the reception. What they didn't know was that Beatlemania in America had been quickly whipped up by Capitol Records, who poured a then-record $50,000 into a compact month-long promotional blitz. The label blanketed the city with "The Beatles Are Coming!" stickers. It distributed four-page Beatle bios and doughnut interviews discs so every radio personality sounded as if they had their own exclusive Fab Four interview. Influential New York DJ were induced to play Beatles' records nonstop and give away Beatles T-shirts, photographs and wigs. Like the iPhone buildup to 6 p.m. last Friday that generated long lines at Apple and AT&T stores, DJs constantly announced when The Beatles' plane from London was landing. As a result, 3,000 screaming kids and dozens of dubious media members greeted Pan Am 101 when it landed in Queens.

It wasn't just strategy, though — the product mattered, too. Like the iPhone, the Beatles had been predated by other teen pop idols and other rock bands. But they didn't look or act like anything that preceded them. With their long hair, Edwardian suits and witty banter, The Beatles were something new. They were something mysterious yet something familiar, something exotic yet something accessible, something… other. Something that Capitol — and now Jobs — was selling.

But neither Beatle- nor iPhone-mania could be sustained if either product had sucked. Musical machers sniped at the sappy simplicity of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in the same way today's tech gurus tsk-tsk iPhone's lack of high-speed wireless access. Then as now, cynics missed the larger societal-bending influence buried under the hype.

Jobs now has the same mission as The Beatles: not only to sustain the hype but to keep ahead of the imitators. Like the long-haired British boy bands that followed The Beatles across the Atlantic, Apple will have to out-think and out-innovate other cell-phone makers who will quickly adopt iPhone's innovations. Considering The Beatles' success at staying on top, Jobs has quite a model to follow.

Competitors will cannibalize the iPhone's innovations. They'll design better touch screens and interfaces. If Jobs does follow The Beatle's model, he'll go back into the studio… er, lab, add HSDPA, wireless iTunes, more memory and something unexpected and off-the-wall innovative to blow our minds again.

Sgt. iPhone? — Stewart Wolpin