3 ms·

Not just Bands, but also Modes: Early military radios had a switch labeled "CW" and "Phone". In radio parlance, "CW" was Telegraphy and "Phone" was Telephony,

• close04 7y ago
  Are any authority, manufacturer, or expert user officially calling the radios on any plane, ship, etc. a "phone"? Does the FAA, Motorola, any CB operator, police or emergency services ever call their radios "phones"? "Phoning" is used for a lot of conceptually similar or analogous actions without implying the use of an actual phone. Like when a device or software "phones home" without being a phone. The device and the concept of the action are independent. We've called devices "telephones" for more than 200 years now and the earliest ones were just megaphones. Very loose decades or centuries old references to a "phone" aren't relevant for an article written today. My point is according to any reasonably modern definition of the words, what's presented in the article is a radio and not a phone, and the usage of "wireless phone" in the title is just an attention grab. Perhaps "biplanes had those days' equivalent of wireless phones in the cockpit" would have been more appropriate... and less clicky.