Thursday, April 4, 2013

"Mr. Watson, come here."

These were reportedly the first words Alexander Graham Bell spoke into his new invention, the "tele-phone", back on March 10, 1876.  As I've read that Mr. Bell was quite a player back in his day, I'm guessing when Watson showed up he said, "Check this out, bro.  I took it with me to The Watering Hole last night....chick magnet! "

In 1966 I was in the AT&T pavilion at Disney Land where the demonstrator lady held up "the phone of the future" and asked, "see anything unusual about it?"  It had NO WIRES!  Whoa!



Fast forward to April 3, 1973.  One Mr. Marty Cooper, a techie at Motorola, called his buddy Joel Engle, another techie working for AT&T, and said, "Suck it Engle.  I'm calling from the world's first completely portable mobile phone.  It's gonna be a real chick magnet.  I win."

And that's where it all began.


As I recall the first dilemma was whether to get a bag phone with more power and better range....


....or a less powerful but much cooler looking brick phone.

I remember my friend Jim Williams had a very early mobile phone installed in his truck.  It had a box the size of a computer tower (remember computer towers?) behind the seat, an antennae on top of the cab, and a handset....with a cord.  He was considered a complete nerd in his day.  And a rich nerd because it cost over 2 Grand.

I was a late bloomer.  I didn't get my first cell phone until the early 90's as best I can remember.  It looked something like this:


I remember I had it about a week before I ever talked on it because I was afraid of going over my minutes.  I would pull it out and show friends, flip it open and show off the lighted keypad, then very carefully replace it in it's belt-mounted case.  Smokin' hot!

I especially liked it when my wife called me when I was at the grocery store and told me to get such-and-such while I was there.  This was significant because she once called the office at Tom Thumb (the grocery store) and asked them to get word to me to pick up something she remembered she needed.  

They fired up their PA system and announced, "Customer Scott Park....customer Scott Park....your wife wants you to get some butter and some cream cheese, too."  (True story!)  I couldn't find a hole deep enough to crawl into and hide.

Here it is today 40 years (this week) after Marty called his buddy and razzed him, and now there are six billion cell phones in the world.  I was wondering how that could be as there are only six billion people in the world, but then I saw this....


and this....


....so I guess it's possible.

Then came the smart phone duel between Steve Jobs and Kimchee Samsung*.  I have an ancient iPhone4, while K has a Samsung Galaxy #?.  She says hers is better, but I'm used to Apple and afraid of change.  The new Samsung is out now and Apple's next new version is expected to be out as soon as June.  And I'm due an upgrade.  Decisions, decisions.

See what you've done Marty?

S

*Not his real first name, but it was the only other Korean word I knew.


15 comments:

  1. I've had my crappy old Nokia for 4 years now because all I use it for is to play solitaire while I wait at the doctor or a restaurant or whatever.

    Incidentally the big inspiration for cell phones was Captain Kirk's communicator in Star Trek where he could flip it open to tell Scotty to beam him up. I bet he couldn't even play Angry Birds on that thing. Suck it, 23rd Century!

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  2. I got my first cell phone in around 1998 or so. And then I "upgraded" to a flip phone a few years later & kept that one until we changed cell plans two years ago. Now I have a very fancy Verizon pay as you go flip phone - ha! I would love to get one of those smart things, but I'm afraid to. I already spend so much time on the internet - I would probably never look another person in the face if I had a smart phone!

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    1. You're right....they can become rather addictive.

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  3. Samsung Samsung Samsung! Hey you can have mine and then I can get a new one ..... that's a good plan :)

    K

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  4. I still don't have a cell phone. I was recently in the Thar Desert in Northern India and it was amazing how many people living in dung huts had cell phones.

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    1. Obviously you've never heard your name called out on the grocery store PA system and been told to bring home butter and cream cheese. ;)

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  5. Great post! The grocery store thing has to be true, who could make that up. Can't believe CC doesn't have a cell phone.

    I remember the early phones cost a fortune and a fortune to make a call. I think I got my first one in 95.

    I knew cell phones were no longer a big deal when I stopped hearing people on the train say, "Guess where I'm calling from?"

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  6. I still have never owned a cell phone, and I plan on going to my grave without ever having owned one. I consider the regular landline phone enough of a pain in the ass that I don't have any desire to carry around a portable pain in the ass.

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  7. As an aside to the photo of the Motorola flip phone: they also made a cordless phone for a land line with the same design. I had one for a while and then traded it to my brother for something or other. It stopped functioning shortly after that :-)

    In cell phones I've had a Nokia, a Motorola, two Samsungs, an LG and currently a Sony Xperia T, the Bond Phone :-) In the 90's we had a car phone that plugged into the cigarette lighter and had a corded receiver. It worked very well but was only as portable as the car it was in...

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  8. I can tell you one thing about smart phones. They're a helluva lot smarter than I am!

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  9. I came late to cell phones - I got my first one in 2007. They do come in handy...

    What really boggles my mind is that in 1980, when I came to the U.S., a phone call to Germany cost about $1 (minimum wage in 1980 was $3.10). Today, for calls on land lines, I use a phone card where an international minute costs 8 cents. However, I rarely call on land lines - Skype is free!

    Ah, the good ole days!

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    1. Yep. "Long distance" is a thing of the past.

      S

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  10. I'm just coming up on my first anniversary of getting my very first Mobile Cellular Telephone. I kind of like it. Next year I'm going to learn how to retrieve my voice mail.

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    1. Hi Murr. Thanks for visiting. So you have a years worth of voicemails stockpiled? That's a lot of annoying sales calls. Just dump 'em all. :)

      S

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