Thread Number: 92362  /  Tag: Small Appliances
Cel phone service in the late 1940s 		[Down to Last]

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Post# 1169623   1/15/2023 at 19:57 (466 days old) by bradfordwhite (central U.S.)        

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Why did it take so long to get to us?
I got my first cel phone which was a "bag" car phone in 1989 and you had to pay per minute.






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Post# 1169627 , Reply# 1   1/15/2023 at 20:41 (466 days old) by MattL (Flushing, MI)        

Got my first in '85 or '86, wow almost 40 years with a cell phone...
Post# 1169700 , Reply# 2   1/16/2023 at 11:52 (465 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

WOW! Thanks for sharing. In the decades from the 40s through the 60s, issues of magazines like Look, Saturday Evening Post and Life used to have a telephone system ad. It was often a night time picture of the exchange in a dark city with one window lighted and a message about an operator there to serve the area. Other ads featured a phone booth along side the road, again usually at night, but I don't remember an ad for mobile service. I do remember that there was a special number, other than 0 for Operator, that was dialed to connect to long distance (which was used in this film) and the big advance that came with Direct Dialing of long distance calls. I remember reading an account in Reader's Digest about two rival Hollywood personalities. One received a call from the other, placed while he was in his chauffeur-driven car, prompting the one who was called to get a mobile phone in his vehicle. The new mobile phone owner called his rival to show off his new mobile phone. While they were talking, the caller was told that the called party had to hang up because his other line was ringing in a perfect case of one-upsmanship. It was a story that seemed way beyond everyday life where Dick Tracy's two-way radio in his wrist watch and walkie talkies were the only method of futuristic voice communication. I remember Broderick Crawford saying 10-4 into his police radio in Highway Patrol. His first name came from his his movie actress mother's (Helen Broderick) maiden name.

I got my first phone from Sprint, with whom I had long distance service. For long distance, I had to dial a toll-free number to access the service then dial the number. I got the phone for emergencies and that is pretty much the use for which I have kept cell phone service. For a long time Sprint offered Government employees a special rate of something like $7.95 a month with air time billed on top of that in later years. When a friend gave me her old I phone I switched to Xfinity and pay about $14.00 a month for the privilege of having the service. Every once in a while, I will turn it on to discover that my sister or a friend has sent me some sort of message or picture, but replying is a PITA so I go to my computer to reply via email. I have to remember to charge the battery once a week.


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