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30 Years of Cell Phone Calls
freitasm writes "30 years ago, 3 April 1973, Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist. The NY Times has an article about the "crime scene". Dr Cooper now works as CEO of Arraycom." There's also a story on siliconvalley.com.
Actually Ericsson and The Swedish Telecom developed a cellphone prototype back in 1950 and Sture Lauhrén made the first call on the 3rd of December.
In 1955 the first automatic mobile phone system was launched in Stockholm to the public.
3 december 1950 was the first automatik cell phone call made by Sture Lauhrén.
:-)
s .p df
An recent interview with Sture is availble here (in swedish) http://www.aftonbladet.se/it/0001/03/mobil.html
1955 Stockholm, Sweden has a working cell phone system.
More on the topic can be found here (in english
http://neptunus.approach.se/pdf/1_2001_The_Root
what is interesting with cell phone is not the portable phone, it is the cell(s).
So when was the first cell boundary crossing without dropping the conversation?
That would be a date to remember.
My Dad used to be a salesman for Nacanco (a can making company). In about 1980, they equipped their sales force with car-phones. They had a whole fleet of Ford Cortinas with (presumably at the time) very expensive car phones!
:-) I think these carphones were more "radio phones" than cell phones that we think of today.
The car phone looked a bit like a CB with a normal telephone handset attached instead of a CB mike. You didn't have a phone number as such, you had a call-sign. My Dad's was "Amber zero eighty six". You had to manually change the cell you were in with a switch on the front of the CB-like unit. The units came with a map to tell you where you should switch cells.
The bit you talked into was like a normal phone handset connected to the CB-like bit. Except it was half duplex and had a push-to-talk switch, so you were encouraged to say "Over" after you were done saying something to the person at the other end. The phones were incapable of dialing a number - you picked them up, and spoke to an operator who dialled the call for you, and then called you back when the other end answered. The operator couldn't tell who was calling - you had to give them your callsign so they could call you back.
The phones were made to ring (as far as I could tell - I wasn't very old at the time) by some kind of analogue tone signalling broadcast. When the phone recognised its tone sequence, it'd start to ring (well, beep loudly actually). The AirCall operator would then connect you to whoever called (or the party you were calling, if you were trying to make an outgoing call).
It was trivial to use the equipment to listen to everyone elses calls, too
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
And the sick thing of all this is that while we Americans laud "choice" and "competition," teeny-tiny countries like Slovenia have 5 providers for a 2-million head market. Calls are dirt cheap (often free for intra-provider) and coverage is amazing. When you go into a Mobitel shop, you get help and clear, understandable plans like "calls are 10 tolars a minute and one tolar Mobitel to Mobitel. You don't even have to get a plan and still have a full featured phone (SMS, voicemail, bank account access, web, etc.) using prepaid.
Here in Tennessee, you are saddled with shit coverage. I can stand on one side of my yard and not get a signal with line-of-sight to the tower but go in the basement and it comes right up. You are saddled with shit sales support. Going to a Verizon or Cingular shop is like stepping back into the Ottoman Empire. You are saddled with equally Byzantine plans. 400 anytime minutes with rollover and 1000 nights and weekend minutes for $49.95. Get bill: $219. What? See you called between 1830 and 1700 on a Tuesday. Well, if you read the teeny-tiny print on the contract you'd see we reserve the right to not honor our agreement during that time if market rates for long-distance are not beneficial to the aggregate good of our customer base. What about my rollover minutes? Sorry, sir. You have to use those all up by the end of each quarter or they are lost.
Put pistol in mouth. Pull trigger.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
They didn't cause interference to hearing aids like mine. These days, many digital cellular phones interfere my hearing aids. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
And according to this article, the Designated Hitter is also celebrating it's 30th birthday. Even then it was the geeks vs. the jocks!
Peace. Sway