Old Mobile Phones (split from another thread)

[securitybreach]

https://i.imgur.com/u4wRhR8.jpg

20 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

Well, let's see... it looks like this woman with the mask on her face is using a magnifying glass and the sun's rays to melt the ice cream in the cone. Some sort of weird experiment? Mask and glasses for safety?

 

Really, it should of said 1985 as we had wireless mobile devices back in 1995.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I never even had/used a cell until 2003 or so. My first one was a Motorola flip-type phone like this one...

 

 

They were good little phones. I haven't made much progress, it seems. This is my current phone 17 years later...

 

 

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

Yeah but they looked like this:

 

 

 

Mine looked like this

 

[abarbarian]

18 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

Yeah but they looked like this:

 

 

All this talk of phones set me off looking for my first phone. It was a brick offered for £9.99 by the AA (Automobile Association) to their members for use in breakdowns back in the 90's I think. I could not find mention of it on the net but came across this which made me smile.

 

Motorola MicroTAC In 1989 Motorola once again redefined the face of the mobile phone with the launch of the MicroTAC. This brought major new advances in miniaturisation, style and usability. Whilst it may be regarded as large and heavy by today's standards, in its day it was simply amazingly light and small and influenced the design of a whole new generation of mobiles. The Motorola MicroTAC introduced the concept of the flip phone where a moveable plate covered and revealed part of the keypad. The small hole in the flip plate gave the impression of it being the microphone but was in fact false; the microphone remained firmly within the main body of the phone and the flip plate was entirely cosmetic. So too was the extending aerial. This was a piece of plastic but was included because market research had revealed that the public expected the phone to have an external aerial. In reality the MicroTAC had an internal aerial. Analogue ETACS Weight = 290g Dimensions = 145 x 60 x 45 mm Battery life = 100 minutes talk time, 24 hours standby   http://www.cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/etacs_mobiles.php

Edited June 20, 2020 by abarbarian

[securitybreach]

And then there were these

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Way back in the day, I worked on radio-telephone and digital trunked systems for automobiles. This was before the cellular system we know today. The phone in the car (think of old Cannon and Barnaby Jones episodes with them making calls from their cars) was actually a two-way radio system that contacted a mobile operator who would link the car's system to a landline for communication. It was slow, clunky, and suffered from range issues due to transmitter power, reception, and interference in big metropolitan areas. It was useless when out-of-range of the mobile operators.

 

Fun times!

 

[securitybreach]

4 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Way back in the day, I worked on radio-telephone and digital trunked systems for automobiles. This was before the cellular system we know today. The phone in the car (think of old Cannon and Barnaby Jones episodes with them making calls from their cars) was actually a two-way radio system that contacted a mobile operator who would link the car's system to a landline for communication. It was slow, clunky, and suffered from range issues due to transmitter power, reception, and interference in big metropolitan areas. It was useless when out-of-range of the mobile operators.

 

Fun times!

 

 

 

I seen an old 1930's gangster film the other month and was surprised to see car phones so I looked it up and sure enough, they had them.

[ebrke]

8 hours ago, securitybreach said:

And then there were these

 

Ah yes, the phone-in-a-bag. I can remember people lugging them around. And they were considered really cool.

 

Even my first cell phone in 1996 was a huge thing compared to what's available now.

Edited June 20, 2020 by ebrke

[securitybreach]

23 minutes ago, ebrke said:

Even my first cell phone in 1996 was a huge thing compared to what's available now.

 

Not mine. My current phone has a screen size of 6.55 inches.

[Bookmem]

22 hours ago, securitybreach said:

 

I seen an old 1930's gangster film the other month and was surprised to see car phones so I looked it up and sure enough, they had them.

What you didn't see was that the "phone" was a big two-way radio that was in the trunk of the car.  Only the handset was mounted under the dash.

[securitybreach]

Just now, Bookmem said:

What you didn't see was that the "phone" was a big two-way radio that was in the trunk of the car.  Only the handset was mounted under the dash.

 

Yeah, that make much more sense. I knew that it wasn't cellular but I figured that it was more than a two-way radio. At that point, why not just use the the normal two-way radio?

[securitybreach]

I just found this:

THE FIRST CAR TELEPHONES, 1946-53

[zlim]

My first phone was a huge, heavy  bag phone that my dad bought for me. (He told me to pick it out but he paid). He worried because I drove my my house to my parent's house more than an hour away . Some of the roads were 2 lane country roads. He wanted me to be able to call for help safely from the car if I had car trouble.

 

What made it heavy was the battery. To recharge it, you had to open the bag and disconnect the battery terminals and then charge it. I finally found this

which allowed me to use the car charger in the house. It saved me the headache of having to disconnect and reconnect the battery.

 

Edited June 21, 2020 by zlim

[securitybreach]

2 minutes ago, zlim said:

My first phone was a huge, heavy  bag phone that my dad bought for me. (He told me to pick it out but he paid). He worried because I drove my my house to my parent's house more than an hour away . Some of the roads were 2 lane country roads. He wanted me to be able to call for help safely from the car if I had car trouble.

 

What made it heavy was the battery. To recharge it, you had to open the bag and disconnect the battery terminals and then charge it. I finally found this

which allowed me to use the car charger in the house. It saved me the headache of having to disconnect and reconnect the battery.

 

 

Nice. I had one of those but that was later in the 2000s. I didn't know that those were sold back then. Neat

[V.T. Eric Layton]

45 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

why not just use the the normal two-way radio?

 

The trunked phone systems, as I was posting about above, actually connected to the landlines via a central control location and mobile operator, so telephone calls could be made/received in the car. The only problem for those really old systems was that it was not full-duplex (both parties able to talk simultaneously); they were simplex - push to talk, release to listen.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

46 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

I just found this:

THE FIRST CAR TELEPHONES, 1946-53

 

WOW! That was state of the art back then. Looks like a huge pile of ca-ca to us these days.

[Pete!]

1 hour ago, securitybreach said:

........why not just use the the normal two-way radio?

 

A lot of people did. They were called "CB Radios".

Privacy was nonexistent, Not particularly practical for criminal conspiracies.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

 No "official" Citizens Band Radio Service prior to 1945.

 

https://hubpages.com/technology/The-History-and-Use-of-CB-Radios

[ebrke]

On 6/20/2020 at 4:47 PM, securitybreach said:

 

Not mine. My current phone has a screen size of 6.55 inches.

 But it doesn't have the shape and thickness and weight of a brick, I'll bet.

[Bookmem]

On 6/21/2020 at 10:22 AM, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

The trunked phone systems, as I was posting about above, actually connected to the landlines via a central control location and mobile operator, so telephone calls could be made/received in the car. The only problem for those really old systems was that it was not full-duplex (both parties able to talk simultaneously); they were simplex - push to talk, release to listen.

Yes, unless you had a very bulky "cavity resonator", you had to "push to talk".  That was because you had too disconnect the receiving antenna while transmitting or you'd burn out the receiver input.  Typically the same antenna was used for both and a relay would switch it from the receiver to the transmitter when you "pressed to talk."  

My first "portable" phone was a DIY project I klugged together in a briefcase back in the late 60s.  I worked for an independent mobilephone co. at the time.  EF Johnson was big in the CB business and was trying to break Motorolla and GE's strangle hold on the commercial two-way market.  They came out with a transistor model VHF two-way that only weighted 7lbs, and, along with the 12v battery, fit in a briefcase.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Heh... the memories. My first CB experience was in about '67, blabbin' on a Johnson 6-channel (5, really, because one was ch. 9) in my older brother's car.