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There's no finite resource, except for spectrum, which isn't the issue here.

[citation needed]

Spectrum requires towers. Towers require time and money and permits to build, AFTER you acquire the the spectrum licenses.

Each tower can service a finite number of devices.

If YOU use your phone to stream video or tether your computer you use one of that finite number for ever hour you are on.

If 200 or 300 people stream 24/7 they can suck a tower dry.

So, yes, spectrum is the issue here. Bandwidth requires spectrum.

Blame AT&T for not building more towers. But save some blame for people like this.

Cellular phones were never the size of a briefcase.

Granted not technically "Cellular" technology but briefcase phones did exist using VHF and UHF frequencies. http://www.privateline.com/IMTS/briefcasephotos.htm http://www.privateline.com/IMTS/briefcase2.htm

Cellular phones were never the size of a briefcase.

Granted not technically "Cellular" technology but briefcase phones did exist using VHF and UHF frequencies. http://www.privateline.com/IMTS/briefcasephotos.htm http://www.privateline.com/IMTS/briefcase2.htm

if they have access to facebook why not just call the police?

It's perfectly understandable that you would ask such a question. To find the answer you would have to do something incredibly difficult and unusual, such as RTFA.

But I'll help you out. Here's the relevant part of TFA:

In the first few hours that followed the earthquake, mobile service was completely disrupted. It was almost impossible to place a call, due to the combination of the damages on the cellular networks and the spike in phone calls. However, on some networks, SMS service was still available. People stuck under rubbles started texting to their friends and family (in Haiti and abroad) to tell them they were still alive and needed help. In Haiti, on a population of 8 million, there were about 4 million mobile phone subscribers. Those friends and family, not knowing what to do, started posting these SOS messages on their social networks, mainly on Facebook.

In a disaster, the phone system can be overwhelmed. The bandwidth and resources the phone system needs to make a voice call are huge compared with the bandwidth and resources needed for a simple SMS text message. A 160-character text message, plus its envelope, should be under 2 kilobits for the whole message. A GSM voice connection uses at least 6.5 kilobits per second, every second.

Also, there are a limited number of conversations possible at one time for each cell tower. In terms of how many people can use a tower at a time, SMS messages are a huge win: an SMS message doesn't tie up a chunk of the tower for seconds.

At my job, we had a Red Cross disaster training session, and the person from the Red Cross told us to expect that cell phone voice service is very likely to not be available in a disaster, but text messages are likely to still work. That was the first time I actually got interested in text messages.

I think, very seriously, that emergency services (police, fire department, etc.) should be set up to receive text messages, precisely to handle the mass-disaster scenario.

Also, in the USA, mobile phones are now required to send GPS location data when the user calls an emergency number (911). I'd like to see a similar feature for texts: when you text to 911, the phone attaches GPS location data to the text message.

steveha

The claim was that they could send voice as an electrical wave several miles. Don't know how true the story is, but it sounds like it might work.

Of course it will work.

Morse used earth conduction to bridge the Susquehanna River in 1842-3. CALLING ALL NATIONS -- 1941

Kids were taking on projects like this in 1913. How To Make A Wireless Telephone

Very Low Frequency (VLF) Stations [2010]
  Ham Radio below 9 kHz [2006?]

Sorta sorry again for replying to self, but after the fact found a great link on the history of party line telephone. Enjoy!

-Matt

Of course, that would have meant Bell's patent on the telephone would have been denied. Quote: Bell filed his application just hours before his competitor, Elisha Gray, filed notice to soon patent a telephone himself. What's more, though neither man had actually built a working telephone, Bell made his telephone operate three weeks later using ideas outlined in Gray's Notice of Invention, methods Bell did not propose in his own patent. History of the Telephone

I've seen this one before, and before. I'm pretty sure the story was confirmed each time, though, but that the affected range is quite small (within a few miles of the base, depending on geography).

I'm still not sure whether I believe it, of course, as I'm not being affected (nor do I know anyone that is). If you've got some articles pointing out to the urban legendness of the stories, I'm all ears. Er, eyes.

You really don't learn, do you? I have rarely found someone so blind to the truth. Haven't you worked out that you are citing an American reference which is biased and plain wrong?

You could at least pick some real American inventions to argue over, like the Teddy Bear, ring do-nuts or Kool-Aid. But hey, let's look at your list yet again

The Computer - like most complex developments it is hard to claim that this is due to one person (or country). The 1939 ABC computer (though worked on till about 42) certainly exhibited parts of a modern system. So did the Konrad Zuse Z1 Computer, built earlier (in 1936) by a German. Generally, the first machine to exhibit all the aspects of a modern computer is considered to be the Manchester University Baby, of 1948, which is British. See the Wikki on the computer timeline, or look here - http://www.computer50.org/

Nuclear Power
"Nuclear reactor 1942 Enrico Fermi US" should read
"Nuclear reactor 1942 Enrico Fermi Italy". Fermi was Italian in 1942, and not a US citizen.

Air Travel - Heavier-than-air aircraft (and specifically air travel) were invented by Sir George Cayley. His paper 'On Aerial Navigation' was in 1809, and he made the first heavier-than-air flight in 1853. The Wright brothers were single-handedly responsible for stopping development of aircraft in the US (by patenting an impractical control system) to such an extent that when WW1 came the Americans had no aircraft, and were forced to buy French.

As for DC-3s being the first airliners - Ha!! Imperial Airways was set up in the UK in 1924. In 1927 it established the worlds first named air service - London-Paris (also Basle, Brussels and Cologne). By 1931 its routes included London to India, London to Central Africa and Cape Town, and London to Australia, as well as numerous connecting routes throughout the Empire. In 1938 it made the worlds first commercial crossing of the Atlantic. http://www.imperial-airways.com/History_page_1.htm l refers. They flew Handley-Page, Vickers, Armstrong-Whitworth and de Havilland aircraft - all British. In passing you might be interested to learn that the first non-stop transatlantic flight was made by Alcock and Brown in 1919 - I bet you thought it was Lindbergh in 1927?

The DC-3 was designed in 1935.

It seems unfair to go on like this - you obviously have no idea what you are talking about and are just relaying US-centric assertions that the US invented everthing. I presume this is what you have been taught - it is wrong. Stop digging yourself into a hole.

As a parting shot, have a look at this site on mobile phones - http://www.privateline.com/PCS/history4.htm . It points out that:

"Ships were the first wireless mobile platforms. In 1901 Marconi placed a radio aboard a Thornycroft steam powered truck, thus producing the first land based wireless mobile

From 1910 on it appears that Lars Magnus Ericsson (Sweedish) and his wife Hilda regularly worked the first car telephone. Yes, this was the man who founded Ericsson in 1876...."

• 1. Rotary phones were built to last (unlike many digital phones). They can survive a drop from a two story building onto concrete. Just go down, pick it up, plug it in, and it will work.
  
  2. Rotary phones can withstand 300lbs of pressure before they will break or deform.
  
  3.Rotary phones can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. This may seem a stretch, but rotary phones have been in buildings which have burnt to the ground and still worked.

General Telephone was never a Regional Bell Operating Company. Check your telephone history.

Of course, elements of the automotive UI were patented, the most famous be the intermittent wipers patent. Many aspects of early telephone and telegraph dials were patented.

right.... because using radios on the battlefield to communicate is a new idea...

I was at Bell Labs for almost three years in the early 1980's, moving over to AT&T Information Systems after the court ordered breakup of AT&T in 1984 or so.

They were pretty laid back then; I may have signed an NDA but I certainly don't recall it. I do recall the usual W4 and Insurance BS but an NDA doesn't stick out.

And yes, I had almost full access to the source tree. IIRC, only some arcane kernel stuff wasn't available, being crafted in assembly. But given the corporate culture I have no doubt it was somehow accessable, but because it was processor / architecture specific, I never bothered looking for it. Plenty of stuff to look at and learn from at higher levels.

Source code was available to any member of technical staff and since it was my second job out of Uni I had a ball. I even dl'ed some source to my Osborne I so I could read it at my lesiure.

In fact I didn't realise how special it was at the time to have access to Unix source code until maybe five years later when I'd moved over to Wall Street.

The Street was ramping up sharply on tech in those days, and Unix (think Sun, NeXt and SGI workstations) was the only game in town since PCs were still pretty underpowered.

I remember someone asking me a question, and I told him to "grep for it". He looked at me cryptically, and then it hit me.

No way to grep Dude - they's binary distributions.

For examples: Here, , and also here

What do you expect from a system designed by a mortician?

What do you expect from a system designed by a mortician?

all my life i've associated the 212 area code with new york.

Livery services (cab/limo/etc.) located in Queens and Brooklyn want to look like they're based in Manhattan and so purchase a (212) number, which forwards the call to their proper number. AFAIK, the assumption that the service is from Manhattan helps considerably with business. So, (212) is not just for phones in NY.

However - to get back on topic - I'd say that adding digits and area codes is less confusing than using prefix letters. "Yes operator. Please connect me to PEnnsylvania 6-5000." Some history on phone dialing here.

For those not in-the-know, the parent means New York as in the "County of" (Manhattan Island), not the "City of" or "State of".

Here's a pretty lengthy article on the reasons - basically, it's not exactly a safety issue; it's more of a nuisance to those using it at ground-level due to the way radio waves travel.

On the other hand, the FAA says it's dangerous.

just like your local phone company would be completely justified in requiring you to buy its phones only,

On February 28, 1885 AT&T was born. Capitalized on only $100,000, American Telephone and Telegraph provided long distance service for American Bell. Only local telephone companies operating under Bell granted licenses could connect to AT&T's long distance network.

Of course, you could argue that AT&T was being Canute-like, but then again, they won, didn't they?