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Bell Telephone launched a mobile phone during the 1940s
- jl6 4y agoWhen did we stop calling things radios and start calling them mobile phones?
- pak9rabid 4y agoProbably with the transition from analog to digital.
- fIREpOK 4y agoDigital phones are still relatively new
- acdha 4y agoIt was much, much earlier than that - analog car or suitcase phones were well known before digital arrived. It was a trope in 80s movies or TV to have someone use one since it meant they were rich and/or important. My assumption is that the nomenclature came from buying one from the phone company. There were other radios around but they weren’t interoperable with the phone network.
- kube-system 4y agoI remember using analog cell phones, and everyone called them cell phones (or cellular phones).
- IncRnd 4y agoProbably when we could make calls to and from regular phone numbers from portable phones.
- tjohns 4y agoMore details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Telephone_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Telephone_Service
- Overtonwindow 4y agoIf you found this article interesting, check out the book "the master switch" by Tim Wu. AT&T had an answering machine back in the 40s, but they were afraid that if anyone found out a phone call could be recorded, nobody would use the telephone. So they suppressed it.
- sidewndr46 4y agoThis seems like it is nonsense. Recording was well understood to exist by the general public in the US by this point. Not everyone had a cassette recorder, but plenty of people understood that recordings could be made of audio.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoBut not Telephone. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/spread-answering-machine-put-on-hold-180973503/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/spread-answering-m...
- sidewndr46 4y agoI'm not really sure anyone counts "Smithsonian Magazine" as a source.
- kube-system 4y agoYeah, merely calling them a “source” would be an understatement of SI’s significance.
- reaperducer 4y agoNot everyone had a cassette recorder, but plenty of people understood that recordings could be made of audio. Yes and no. They understood that recordings could be made of audio, but they expected everything to be live and ephemeral. That's why if you listen to old radio shows, very often the introduction includes the phrase "...coming to you by transcription from {$city}..." "Transcription" is what they used to call recording, and people were almost always told that what they were listening to was not a live broadcast. It's so common, I have to wonder if there was a period in time when it was a legal requirement.
- chasil 4y agoA Soviet mathematician developed CDMA in 1935, and their first mobile telephone was implemented in 1957. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-division_multiple_access#USSR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-division_multiple_access#...
- dmix 4y agoSounds like it was ultimately deployed in 30 Russian cities in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_(mobile_telephone_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_(mobile_telephone_system... It doesn't say how much it costs or why it died though.
- orbital-decay 4y agoRussian-language version of that article has more details. It's been widely used until early 90s by taxists, bus drivers, firefighters, emergency services, etc, but was unencrypted and had too little capacity for individual use, and also no possibility for billing. It wasn't a handheld device either. The replacement was in the plans, but the Soviet Union crashed and there was no money to develop the new system, so everyone just switched to GSM.
- prennert 4y agoWild guess and it's too late to find sources, but phones in the Eastern block were a highly political thing and access to landlines was strictly controlled. So maybe there was no incentive to scale a mobile solution that worked for the elite and basic services.
- azubinski 4y agoThis is the (traditional to...) transformation of reality into something else. Both of the characters listed in Wikipedia have absolutely nothing to do with orthogonal codes and so on. Unfortunately, Wikipedia can be edited for other purposes than information access freedom.
- pjungwir 4y agoBell launched a video phone too, back in the 60s. You can read about it in The Idea Factory, which is full of fascinating history. That book attributes the failure to people not wanting to be seen. I've worked with people who definitely didn't want to turn on their video on Zoom calls! :-/
- userbinator 4y agoI worked for a telecommunications product company a while ago, and while all employees were given videophones (and there were conference videophones too), and actually used them quite frequently compared to IM, they were almost always used in audio mode only. Besides not wanting to be seen, it takes far more attention to be looking at each other than it does to be talking while doing other things.
- ghaff 4y agoYeah. I don't mind switching video on and do by default in a smaller meeting and certainly 1:1. But, if I'm multitasking I'll regularly switch the camera off if I can't/don't want to be front and center with the webcam and keylight.
- ghaff 4y agoMy sense is that video became widespread when networks got good enough that it was effectively free if you were going to use the network for audio anyway. There were companies like PictureTel but I'm pretty sure both the equipment and operational costs weren't things that consumers were going to pay. There may have been social resistance early-on as well but I'm sure grandma would have liked to see the new baby if the tech were cheap and easy--even if people then, as now, don't universally want to be on camera.
- tomcam 4y agoThere was a working version of it at Disneyland.
- jamesbfb 4y agoAnd here’s a great video about said video phone: https://youtu.be/Xqb1o8up_Fw https://youtu.be/Xqb1o8up_Fw I’m scratching my head trying to figure out the mechanism of that top down camera.
- ghaff 4y agoNot the same thing but even in the early 80s, I would use a hybrid radio and landline system when I was on drilling rigs. You'd call the marine operator and they'd patch you through to a landline. Don't quite remember how it worked the other way.
- soperj 4y agoMaybe the marine operator would call you, and then they'd patch you through to the landline?
- ghaff 4y agoJust don't remember. Possibly the marine operator radioed and the radio operator on the rig answered. The company also had its own radio room but it may have been easier/higher quality to use the marine operator for outbound than our main radio room. But this was all 40 years ago so fuzzy on the details.
- dghughes 4y agoMy Dad worked for the Canadian Coast Guard. One time (1980s) one of the crew got a call from home on ship-to-shore radio. It was his wife with a non-emergency but she called the ship. The entire ship turned around and went to port. I forget what it was for (where is the chequebook, where is the spare house key etc.?) but it was a huge embarrassment for the guy! It must be one-way or something like that since it seemed the ship had to go in so he must not have been able to call back to his wife.
- ytjohn 4y agoOn the amateur radio side of the house, we had what we called phone patches. A radio repeater with a phone connection. Operating a radio with a touchpad, you would enter a code to enable the phone patch, then do the dialing. This was in no way a private call. Anything said on the phone went out over the open repeater. And even more interesting, any other ham could join in on your call. But ultimately, most hams would not do so out of respect. While popular in the 80s and 90s, they obviously decreased in popularity as cell phone usage/coverage increased.
- Luc 4y agoWasn't there a mobile phone system that worked with short-range antennas spread throughout the city (e.g. New York)? You'd have to stand in certain locations, indicated by a sign in the street, to make your phone call. I can't find anything on Google so I'm wondering if it was a real thing.
- roywiggins 4y agoIt was a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_%28telecommunications%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_%28telecommunications%2... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2
- kalleboo 4y agoAlso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Handy-phone_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Handy-phone_System
- PreInternet01 4y agoYes, it was, and these were probably ETSI 300 131 cells ('Cordless Telephone Type 2'), although I'm not sure any networks based on this were ever deployed in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2 In Europe, CT2 networks briefly enjoyed some popularity, before being superseded by NMT networks for public use sometime in the 1990s. These were analog and had worse audio quality, but at least allowed incoming calls (CT2 was outbound-only).
- IMSAI8080 4y agoThere were several in the UK briefly. The idea was you'd pick up your home cordless landline phone and take it with you, then you could make a call anywhere you saw a "phone zone" sign. Analogue mobile killed it pretty fast and it didn't take off.
- dboreham 4y agoiirc GSM killed it. Analog cell phone existed long prior.
- agumonkey 4y agoin a similar style, there were radio based lane tracking installed in some highways so your car could stay centered.. it's funny how far back these ideas were tried
- SoftTalker 4y agoSimilar technology used for instrument landings (ILS) at airports. A radio beacon is centered on the runway and in poor visibility pilots can use it to be sure they're lined up and on the correct approach path before they can see the runway.
- agumonkey 4y agoAh thanks, makes sense.
- jimbokun 4y agoWhen the originating device is a land line, how did the system know which antenna(s) to route the call to? And how did the receiving mobile device know the broadcast signal was meant for that specific mobile phone?
- chmod600 4y agoIt looks like they had to try a general area (like "Centerville"). To know that it's for a particular phone is easy, just have some tones that identify the intended recipient, and the phone will only ring if the tones match.
- jd3 4y agoI first watched this video when it was posted to Periscope's youtube channel 3 years ago. Since then, I've wondered 1) why this video is not included in ATTTechChannel's AT&T Archives[0]? 2) why it's in the hands of a private stock footage company? Periscope says they saved many of the 16mm military reels in their collection from the landfill/incinerator in the 40s-70s[1], but why would Bell have tossed this? Seems bizarre. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDB8B8220DEE96FD9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDB8B8220DEE96FD9 [1]: https://periscopefilm.com/about-us/ https://periscopefilm.com/about-us/
- LastTrain 4y agoI was wondering the same thing, perhaps this was a government funded project?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adrianmonk 4y agoThis page has tons of detailed info about old (1946 and on) car phones, including lots of photos: https://www.wb6nvh.com/Carphone.htm https://www.wb6nvh.com/Carphone.htm
- programd 4y agoWhat a great link! Speaking of car phones, one of the best depictions of a car phone was in the 1958-1961 show "Peter Gunn", a cracking good film noir TV series. Gunn had a car phone in his very cool 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible (I so wish tailfins were still a thing...) There's a picture of his phone from the show [1] which seems to match the Western Electric model from the above link [2]. Anyway, watch the show if you can find it - the epitome of jazzy noirish cool. [1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/peter-gunns-mobile-car-phone--510243832765658307/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/peter-gunns-mobile-car-phone--... [2] https://www.wb6nvh.com/MTSfiles/Carphone1.htm https://www.wb6nvh.com/MTSfiles/Carphone1.htm
- LBJsPNS 4y agoSome of the best music ever committed to a TV series was on that show. Musically, it's the 50s' WKRP In Cincinnati.
- azubinski 4y agoThanks
- rmason 4y agoWhen I was just starting elementary school in Detroit my best friends dad was a high power exec who had a radio phone. He would sometimes take me to school as they lived just down the street. I never saw him use the phone but my father told me once there was a very small number available for the city and it was quite expensive.
- Spooky23 4y agoA friend obtained a scanner that allowed you to hear one side of those conversations for mobile and marine radio. We used to listen once in awhile. One guy in particular was hilarious - he’d call to let the wife know the plane was delayed and he’d be home late, then call his girlfriend to have her drop by the boat. The dude would talk in very obvious “code”. “Need some help with the salami”, etc.
- Eleison23 4y ago[dead]
- joezydeco 4y agoBack in the USENET days it was pretty common knowledge if you took a Bearcat 200XLT and removed a resistor you could tune into the analog cellular frequencies. http://textfiles.com/hamradio/MODIFICATIONS/bc200xlt.txt http://textfiles.com/hamradio/MODIFICATIONS/bc200xlt.txt It worked pretty well although it was half duplex so you only heard one side of the conversation. Sometimes the speaker bled into the mic and you could hear a little more.
- MrRadar 4y agoAbout a month ago the Antique Wireless Museum posted a presentation about this phone system (MTS) and its successors (IMTS and AMPS) to their Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRqg8INF9s0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRqg8INF9s0 The presentation includes technical details of how the systems operated. According to the presentatoin, pricing for the system as of 1946 was $15 per month plus $0.15 per minute; that's $200 per month and $2.00 per minute adjusted for inflation.
- lb1lf 4y agoMy grandfather was a field engineer with the utility company in Aalesund, Norway; they got one of the first cellular phones (of sorts) in the Aalesund area sometime in the early sixties. As he recalled it, the phone occupied most of the trunk of the Ford Anglia they used to get around town. It was a fully manual affair - they had a calling channel where the operator would say something like 'Subscriber 11, phone call for you on channel 4' - subscriber 11 (and anyone else who cared to listen in) would then turn a dial to channel 4 and get on with their conversation. After the call ended, they had to manually revert to the calling channel. There only being a handful of subscribers had its perks - once when he was on his way to lunch with the head of the local branch of the phone company, when they heard on the phone official's cellular that a call was incoming for my grandfather. He simply answered using the other guy's phone, and the operator chuckled and said that was OK, she recognised his voice and would bill the airtime to the utility company's account.
- davidw 4y agoI think we lost something when we lost that accent for news.
- tomcam 4y agoAlthough some things are eternal. The film clearly shows that Ben Shapiro was already at work as some sort of assistant truck driver, maybe putting himself through law school. Who knows, maybe he should kept that gig.
- CharlesW 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
- BizarroLand 4y agoWhen I was a kid I was watching old reruns one day on a sick day and I saw a black and white episode of the Andy Griffith show where some rich fatcat from the city had a telephone in his car. This was in black and white so I assume the episode was from the late 40's early 50's. I was really shocked that they had cell phones back then.
- hnburnsy 4y agoWait until you hear about when the first practical battery electric car was developed... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car
- dboreham 4y agoOr the first transatlantic cable..
- BizarroLand 4y agoOr that the Fax machine predates the telephone by 32 years Alexander Bain invented a fax machine in 1843, Morse invented the telephone in 1875.
- LBJsPNS 4y agoThe Andy Griffith Show ran from 1960-1968.
- BizarroLand 4y agoThat's wild. Thanks for the clarification
- Johnny555 4y agoThat's not exactly a mobile phone, the "phone" handset in the car has a push to talk button that you'd have to push when you want to talk, just like keying a microphone, it was single-duplex communication just like a radio. The other end was just a patch between the radio network and telephone network, which was relatively common before cell phones, my dad could make calls from his company two way radio back in the 70's by asking dispatch to route him through to a phone, they'd make the call and tell him what channel to switch to for he call. And of course there was no privacy, anyone on that channel could listen (or talk) to your call.
- jimktrains2 4y agoBy ”single duplex” do you mean simplex (versus a single duplex channel, which would allow simultaneous 2-way communication)?
- Johnny555 4y agoI think it's more "half duplex" - either side can transmit, but over a single channel so only one at a time.
- spinchange 4y agoAs a Bell Labs fanboy this is one of my favorite bits of trivia. They invented the future a long, long time ago.
- IncRnd 4y agoIn that video, the phones were used by the passenger of a moving vehicle, or the vehicle was stopped. No drivers were on their phones!!! Please remember that when you are driving your car.
- makz 4y agoMy father told me about this. Mexican senators had it in their cars.
- paulorlando 4y agoLoved the view of the units that were installed in the cars. And yet 40 years later AT&T largely divested from the next generation of mobile telephony, handheld wireless, just as the market was about to take off.
- Merrill 4y ago1939 First Motorola Two-Way Radio In 1939 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced its first Motorola two-way radio. Public safety officers used the radio to transmit and receive voice communications from their cars. From A Timeline Overview of Motorola History - 1928—2008 https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/6800_MotDoc.pdf https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/6800_MotDoc.pdf
- Stratoscope 4y agoIf you like this, you may also enjoy: Dial Comes to Town (also 1940s) https://youtu.be/p45T7U5oi9Q https://youtu.be/p45T7U5oi9Q
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ted_bunny 4y agoOn a related note: the fax machine dates to the 1840s — that's earlier than the Pony Express.
- gedy 4y agoIn the 90s, someone gave me a prototype mobile carphone system that you would set up outside your home, and hooked up to your landline. The car would then radio back to your home. It was quite polished and looked like a production unit, but sadly I didn't keep anything. This familiar to anyone?
- zw123456 4y agoOne of the first projects I worked on at Bell Labs back in the day, was a replacement for IMTS called HCMTS, High Capacity Mobile Telephone Service, later renamed AMPS, the original analog cellular technology. I was 2 years old at the time (joke, I am old ;) What was interesting is that during the break up of the Bell System, no one wanted the technology because the marketing research estimated that something like 150,000 people nationally wanted it. But they asked the question the wrong way, people were thinking of it like the old expensive IMTS, not something you could hold in your hand. That came later. It reminded me a lot of Kodak letting digital photography go because the early versions were klunky, and they thought it would never take off. Classic story in tech.
- nradov 4y agoKodak was actually an innovator and market leader in early digital photography. But they failed to keep up with other camera vendors and didn't get into the camera phone business.
- mdasen 4y agoPardon my ignorance, but I guess I have a few questions. Wouldn't the hand-held nature be more dependent on batteries and technology than on the network technology? NiMH batteries weren't really commercial until 1989 and NiCd batteries have disadvantages. Likewise, advances in chips mean less space usage for many things. I'm kinda surprised that AMPS uses so much less spectrum. From Wikipedia, it seems to indicate 0.5-1MHz (compared to 30kHz for AMPS). Was it just that radio equipment wasn't as good back then so you needed a lot of spacing in addition to the 30kHz voice signal? Something else? It also seems like a big part of it would be making the tower spacing closer. The 0.6-3W AMPS signals at 800MHz wouldn't travel as far as the 25 watts for IMTS operating at 35-460MHz, yes? It seems like part of AMPS was betting on a large investment in infrastructure that would allow lower-power devices which would allow for smaller devices because of smaller batteries, yes? Sorry to bombard you with questions, but I'm just curious about what things might have been trade-offs (like investing in more towers to allow smaller batteries) and what things might have been technology advances (like radios that could discriminate signals better requiring less spacing or new battery types).
- hendrikrassmann 4y agoThe talking on the phone bit at the beginning reminds me of Erlang, The Movie: https://youtu.be/xrIjfIjssLE?t=205 https://youtu.be/xrIjfIjssLE?t=205
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago[dead]
- ztetranz 4y agoI'm old enough to remember Cannon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_(TV_series)#Props https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_(TV_series)#Props