1940s BELL TELEPHONE "MOBILE TELEPHONES" MOVIE EARLY CELL PHONE / MOBILE TELEPHONE SYSTEM 90884
Vložit
- čas přidán 13. 02. 2019
- Created in the late 1940s, this film from Bell explains the operation of the Mobile Telephone Service (MTS) by showing how it can be used to make business more efficient. The film also shows some of the cutting edge equipment used in the system and shows how it was installed in vehicles (7:30).
MTS was a pre-cellular VHF radio system that linked to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). As such it used both radio signals and telephone lines to connect parties. MTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service. The Mobile Telephone Service was one of the earliest mobile telephone standards. It was operator assisted in both directions, meaning that if one were called from a land line the call would be routed to a mobile operator, who would route it to one's phone. Similarly, to make an outbound call one had to go through the mobile operator, who would ask for the mobile number and the number to be called, and would then place the call.
This service originated with the Bell System, and was first used in St. Louis on June 17, 1946. The original equipment weighed 80 pounds (36 kg), and there were initially only 3 channels for all the users in the metropolitan area, later more licenses were added bringing the total to 32 channels across 3 bands This service was used at least into the 1980s in large portions of North America. On October 2, 1946, Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell Telephone Company's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago.Due to the small number of radio frequencies available, the service quickly reached capacity. MTS was replaced by Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS), introduced in 1964.
All calls were placed by a suitably equipped telephone operator. Outgoing calls were placed when the operator connected to a base station (originally using a cord board, but by the 1990s could be done by dialing a code sequence from a TOPS position), then announced the call over the channel (giving the channel's name first), e.g., "Adams calling 2M-2368, 2M-2368, 2M-2368."
The page would usually be repeated twice more after a pause. The called party had to have their unit on and the volume set at a level that allowed them to notice a call and then listen to the called number. If the called party heard an incoming call, they would then use the microphone to announce they were receiving the call, and the operator would allow the two parties to speak, monitoring for the end of the call and marking a manual ticket for billing.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference."
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFilm.com
I am watching this video on my mobile telephone. 😂
Yeah yeah ok whatever.....
Me too
Didn’t even think about the irony until you mentioned it
👋😂👍guilty!
Saying no way, it'll never happen -- whilst watching on my modern cell phone -- fully enthralled
That's awesome
My dad retired in 1980, and I asked him once if he kinda wished he had owned a cell phone. He replied, “Hell no. If I carried a cellphone, I would have never had time to think.” He certainly had a point.
He kinda had a point. But he is your dad, so you're biased
Mobile phones are great. The problem starts with the internet connectivity, you get so distracted checking your FB, Instagram, Whatsapp etc. etc. that you stop thinking, maybe that's what your Dad meant.
@@daitos1955 Internet connectivity is great. The problem starts with the social media apps.
Internet connectivity itself is not bad, given you can do things on the go you otherwise couldn't. Some important notifications can be pushed through HTTP requests which is much better than using phone lines and DTMF tones to connect.
@@sage_x2002 like credit cards, they're a double bladed weapon, they're of great help or they can financially bury you.
@@daitos1955 Yep, reason why not to use credit cards, rather debit cards and get a loan. Loans usually have lower interest too, compared to credit cards, for those who really want to do that instead of saving up
In the early 1960s I helped my father to build 8 miles of telephone line (poles and wires) after a rural automatic exchange was installed within reach of our farm in Western Australia. We were advised to use copper wire but that length (16 miles) of copper wire would have been too expensive so we used a soft type of steel wire and to our great relief it worked perfectly for a couple of decades until an underground cable replaced it. Now the same farm is within range of a mobile phone tower.
I too have placed The 109 Steel Telephone wire as a lineman for The Bell System in 1969 and I still have my sleeve box with the aluminum sleeves to splice it and bridle it into the wire that went down the poles to a connector called a "Mouse Trap" so someone could attach it to their residence telephone. I really cherish those memories as you do and wish I could go back to those days again. 😃👍✌
*Things may change... but antennas stay the same...!!! (LOL)* 😂
Rais
I appreciate your comment!!!
In American West, famously a lot of farms used barbed wire to transmit the phone signal.
@@williamnavarre8169 Interesting dual purpose. I've never seen that but it would certainly work if the wire was connected to the fenceposts via insulators.
We had a scanner at work and in the early 90s we could listen in on cell phone conversations. At first, you would hear "you'll never guess where I'm calling from" a lot. About a month later, after they got their first bill, it was "hey, I'm on my cell. let me call you back when I get to a (home)phone". We also caught someone cheating on their spouse. Someone from our shop ended up calling the guy and told him that we could hear everything he was saying. He was actually pretty grateful for the heads-up.
This is a crazy story!
In the 80s-90's, We could take a baby monitor outside under telephone wires and catch neighbors conversations!
Yup, I had a scanner as well. If I remember correctly it would scan thru many frequencies rapidly. I heard the teen boy 3 houses down telling his best friend that he wanted to be a women.. this was in the early 90s so it wasn't as common and accepted as it is today... But yeah, I would listen to all sorts of conversations. Once in a while you would know who it was , other times a mystery!!!
@@CarsCatAliens that's funny, my grandparents still had a party line, my sisters used to pick up the phone, keeping their finger on the receiver, unscrewed the microphone Part, unhooked that so they couldn't hear them
carefully, listen to The neighbors!
baby monitors were a thing in the 80s & 90s
But I started working in law offices as a teenager, later in life I was a director of a psychiatric halfway house-
I've heard too much!
for the last 20 years, I don't want to know-I don't listen to conversations, read diaries-some days I don't even ask people how they are lol!
I don't need to know -
I'm good!
Haha!
Oh yeah, Clara on Mayberry r.f.d. was a real thing.
I accidentally tuned into a telephone call when trying to adjust my TV... What a difference from today.
When I was age 8 in 1966, I got a pair of walky-talkies for Christmas that were on the same frequency as the Mobile Telephone service and you could listen in on mobile phone calls and even sometimes talk to the people making the calls. I had several Mobile phone people tell me that they were going to report me to the FCC, but they ain't never found me yet.
Children's walkie talkies were on CB 14, 11 meters, and AM and mobile telephones were on VHF FM, 2 meters. Nice story but it couldn't happen.
@Jim Robinson although many of the facts behind this story are missing, I find it highly doubtful that a parent would give an 8 year old child a PAIR of professional grade Motorola HT200 hand-helds as a toy for Christmas. While it "could have happened" in all likelihood it probably didn't. I can't imagine parents, out Christmas shopping, going to a communications outlet, looking at these heavy units and not knowing they weren't to be used as toys (nor a salesman not asking the intended use when helping the couple) and plopping down the cost of these radios for children's toy when they could have more easily went to the department store and gotten a pair of $20 walkie talkies, specifically built for kids.
Ours, during the 70's used to drive truckers on the interstate nuts and they would always say the FCC is coming for us.
@Jim Robinson Nothing worse than people who use that comical phrase "just saying." Of course you're just saying, you typed it, didn't you? And while you're going to use that, I'll return the favor by telling you what you're "just saying" has absolutely nothing to do with the leading comment, which was about a set walkie talkies given to an 8 year old child for Christmas. That's completely different to a child from police officer's family who "got" a hold of dads HT. If you're willing to swallow the Christmas gift story hook, line and sinker, that's your choice. I'll question it strongly based on extenuating circumstances.
Thx1138sober Hey Brother, born in ‘58 myself. I believe you. Also think you are in the clear.
The biggest technological advancement in my house in the 70s was getting a super long curly cord that allowed you to go outside or in another room to talk... state of the art... woo whoo .... yes, we only had one telephone :(
Yes and before everyone went Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs~!!!
Keith Wilson was your sister always on it?
And We English would bring three things back from trips to the States. A Zippo, a phone with buttons and the long cord.
Did you have a girlfriend to talk to?
Keith Wilson I remember getting the 25 foot wall cord for the phone, talking outside was so bad ass.
...and I was impressed with someone who had a mobile in the 90's!
I worked for a small company that had a VHF mobile system in the early 90s and they gave me a mobile phone for my vehicle. I also had an 800 number pager, remember those? I retired from a big communications company working mostly high speed data over fiber, microwave and satellite delivering the bandwidth to other companies and our customers. What gets me is the government collects a tax on every phone number. When they started this households only had 1 phone and now they have many phones but every phone still has the tax.
Even more amazing is how Joe knew the truck had plenty of room for the undisclosed amount of "stuff" they had to pick up.
Or that he bothered to answer the phone.
😂😂😂
A good driver (especially one doing what is known today as LTL, Less Than Truckload) knows what he has on his truck/trailer. 😉
@@MirlitronOne Being treated as a business telephone, he would have answered. Different mores, back then.
The company picks up the same packages from each business. So they know exactly what they are going to pick up. I know that's hard for you to use your brain but it's really simple to figure out
Everyone had the same voice back then lol. It’s like they had one narrator for every film.
Sounds like the same guy who used to narrate our school movies back in the 60s and 70s : )
Zaptor they were serious back then. And no one steps on their lawns nowadays. 😊
It's called the transatlantic accent. Look it up
@@Thelonelyscavenger Nope, I choose to believe that it was just one irrationally busy dude. The nuclear bomb tests were just a cover for us shuttling him around the country on rockets.
Guys dressed nice back then, fedora hat and suit for everyday wear.
From 1961 to 2011 my dad had a Two-Way Radio shop and was a General Electric Mobile Radio Dealer and sold and serviced the MTS and IMTS systems. I remember in the mid-seventies, my best friend and I were riding with my Dad in his business GMC step van. Dad asked my friend, "Do you want to call your mom on the phone?" Dad (Rotary-Dialed the number) on the IMTS set mounted to the wall of the step van. My friend said to his mother (in a tone of excited dis-belief), "Hi mom, I'm riding in Ed's truck!" Great memory, especially since my dad has past on.
Russ Wentz, that's a great story and a great memory. Puts into perspective how much luxury we have in our lives today. Back then, something like that was extraordinary.
@Robert Pearce Yeah, the 1970's were the heyday for the Two-Way Radio market. Dad was an intelligent and hard working man and business owner and earned every penny he made and then some! No, there weren't any coin operation, just used for a business field service van communications.
@nm I know, what kinda crap am I trying to pass along here anyway!
passed on, not past on.
wow it must been exhilarating experience to communicate wirelessly back in the stone age..
I love the cheerful music they used on these bulletins. Post war years seemed to be the most optimistic era in the last 100 years.
I'm really impressed.I wasn't aware that such technology existed in the 40's.I was high tech for the period, and probably quite expensive.
From comment just below
"Mobile Telephone Service from AT&T (Bell) was $15 per month in 1949, with each call costing about 40 cents. While that sounds affordable, in today's dollars that would be $165 per month/almost $5 per call. There were limited channels, usually no more than 24 for a whole metropolitan area, you often had to wait more than an hour for an available channel to make a call.
@@CFox.7 Great fact!Thanks for sharing!
"Great. That was the boss. Now we have to make another stop. I hate this damned phone!"
prokesuk 😂😂
That was their exact feeling, no doubt!
I’m a trucker. I agree. Now we have Qualcomm - we don’t even need a phone
B Christian funny scammer reply but how are the irs scammers going to constipate your belongings? Feed them lots of cheese and peanut butter? 😂😂😂
B Christian also how can a warranty be used to officiate an arrest?😂😂😂😂😂
This is even more remarkable when you consider this service was available before most American homes had television.
I want that classic mobile phone model ..to replace the boring thin rectangular shape iphone/android ....
Most people still had black and white televisions until the late 1990s too. Long after real mobile phones.
@@sgillman16 that's not true at all, more than 50% of households with televisions had a color TV by 1972, and 98% of TV households had color by 1999. It was actually kind of hard to even find new black and white TVs for sale by the late '90s
@@11sfr I had a black and white tv in 1996
@@hewhohasnoidentity4377 You may have owned one in 1996 but when did you buy it? 20 years before?
There's something so wonderful about these informational videos. Just simple, direct a bit innocent and authentic. Modern videos typically are patronizing, juvenile, manipulative, over the top and superficial.
I watched this video on an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean. Life is wonderful.
I feel like a time traveler watching this on my smartphone.
We are bud
imagine telling those people back then that in the 2000s many people will believe the earth is flat
I love these old briefs
I'm 67. This would have been my father's world just before my birth and I am watching it Smartphone.
80 years later we still have dead spots on the interstate!
my GSM service has no Dead spots.
Its towers are Smaller and they are every 500 feet or so.
and GSM offers PCS services.
I can even use my Phone as a MODEM with a USB.
@Etienne Mohammed Omar's widow wants her Sat Phone back....
I still hit dead spots when driving through Centerville.
That's because you have Sprint or Tmobile
Mark Godfrey Verizon sucks in Oklahoma and other areas
Wow, driver and co-driver, each one able to start a family and buy a house on a single income... That's the most amazing part of this video.
...probably working 70 hours a week, plus holidays. And having lower bills because they likely didn't have multiple cars per household, one phone line per house (with long distance calls - even to the next town over sometimes - being considered expensive), no cable, *no TV* even, a handful of AM radio stations they could listen to, no AC (so a much lower power bill), and the US having about the only really healthy economy on the planet (because we not only didn't get bombed into rubble, but were making money rebuilding Europe and Japan)...
His wife, unless she just wanted a career outside the home, probably didn't have to earn an additional income, and they paid next to nothing in taxes.
Thank you for the video and EVERYONE commenting how they knew about this. My dad had a rotary dial phone in his car before 1970 and I wondered if he was some type of special ops G....or if I imagined the whole thing! LOL Thank you all!
How rich are you? Lol
@@26MECH special ops G rich lol
@@jackbennett4828 lmao hell yea I dig it
'Sometimes a larger battery .. is needed for additional power.'
Yup. Still in 2021.
A "larger battery AND GENERATOR!" I'm thinking your car can only do two things at this point. Transport the driver and make phone calls.
Batteries have evolved extremely slow.
What amazed me is that you can't even BUY a mobile telephone for your car anymore. New I mean. Cell phones have totally replaced them.
@@retroguy9494 You can.
For example the
Pei Tel PTCarPhone 6 is a modern car phone.
It is a modern LTE/4g device. It supports voice over LTE (VoLTE) as well as 3G and 2G (GSM). In addition to voice telephony it supports 4G data and it is a mobile Wifi hotspot. With an external antenna you can expect much better reception than a smartphone inside off the car.
But that thing is expensive (over 600 € + installation cost).
In the early 2000s, I had a Nokia dock/speakerphone kit installed in my truck that never really worked right. So I wired it to switch the audio to an old payphone handset receiver that I had in my center console whenever I picked it up. It looked exactly like these guys in the video. I did it because those receivers are a lot easier to hold with your shoulder than cellphones. LOL
Marty McFly, to the people of the '40s: "I guess you're not ready for this, but your great grandkids are going to love it!"
Greg Delia great scott
🤣🤣🤣
Hahaha, that ended up to be true for me anyway. Now.....The flying car!!
What do you mean "great"? Not even "grand" here. LOL
Well, you're the Doc, Doc!
Wow, 1940s mobile car phones that utilize FM radio and dynamically switch between transmitters. I was not aware of such a technology at that time until now.
I remember when the phone was in the vehicle and not portable yet. Loud speaker or horn would blow when a call came in. Same era, we had some pretty good two way radio systems that covered almost 100 mile radius depending on terrain and weather. Rainy weather seamed to make it carry further, like FM radio bouncing off the clouds. Had an FCC radio license to operate those and a 100+ watt repeater on lease up on a local mountain.
Mobile Telephone Service from AT&T (Bell) was $15 per month in 1949, with each call costing about 40 cents. While that sounds affordable, in today's dollars that would be $165 per month/almost $5 per call. There were limited channels, usually no more than 24 for a whole metropolitan area, you often had to wait more than an hour for an available channel to make a call.
This is why all mobile phone are now Cellular, by reducing the range of antennas, and increasing the number of them, based on user density, additionally making the protocols more efficient and automated, the successor AMPS system allowed a much better and cheaper experience
But you cannot compare, the service could cost not only 15 dollars, but 150 dollars and it would be profitable, it was dedicated to companies generating more work to make money, just with a call diverting a truck to serve a client, it would be more than profitable to pay these 15 dollars.
@@madriditunes7021 Yes, very different use case. It was for businesses. In today's money the $5 call would save potentially a few hundred bucks in labor and gas to re-send a different truck on a long trip.
AT&T normal long distance calls were VERY EXPENSIVE for decades. The source of countless family arguments each month ..."who the hell called.... for 30 mins !!!!"
@@KrustyKlown AT&T long distance was expensive for two main reasons. Phone service was provided by AT&T as a public necessity. The profits from long distance calls were used to subsidize the universally available wire-line phone service. A person living 20 miles from the nearest town was still entitled to phone service at rates comparable to the rates in town. It could cost AT&T hundreds of dollars per month to provide that hardware and the network it connected to. The second reason for the expense was simple. It was to discourage overuse of the long distance circuits. In 1946 a call from San Francisco to Los Angeles would have exclusive use of 400 miles of wire, dozens of amplifiers and maybe even a microwave or radio link. AT&T carefully set the prices low enough that it was practical to make business and important calls and at the same time it was expensive enough that parents did not let the kids spend more than a few minutes talking to grandma in the hills of Tennessee.
Disclaimer: I was an AT&T employee back in the 70s.
Never knew this existed since the 40s. I'm really impressed
Ditto - Mandela Effect for me.
I am also very surprised.
Yes. Turned into a CB
It’s more of a proof of concept.. wasn’t really fully in service yet
LOL that's because it didn't
I worked at a pro photography store from 1976 till 1979, well before cellular telephone service, and we had four customers that had mobile telephones in their cars. They would often order film and other photo supplies from their mobile telephones and swing by to pick them up. The call quality was not as good as a landline, but it got the job done. I remember one of our customers who had mobile telephone service show us the equipment in the trunk of his car. It wasn't as bulky as the equipment in the video, but it still took up a corner of his trunk. When I left the business in '79 for a better paying job, my boss just had mobile telephone service installed in our store delivery station wagon. How times have changed.
Years ago I had an old, bulky Motrac (Motorola) unit in the trunk of my car. They used frequencies in the 150 MHz VHF range. One time I was about 250 miles from my home city and was up on an 11,000 foot mountain. I was able to reach the mobile operator in my city directly.
My Dad worked for Bell Telephone for 30 years. During the massive fiber optic upgrade in the 80's I remember him saying it wouldn't be long before phone lines were going to be a thing of the past. He lived long enough to see the marketing of cell phones to the masses.
My father started in the early 70's with Southern Bell, then it changed to Bell South, then was bought out by AT&T in 2006. He retired in 2007 and he always told me the same thing. Today I don't know anyone that still has a landline at home.
@@tigerintheboro I still have a landline, since it's the most reliable type of phone service. I'm 47 years old and I don't recall even one instance in my entire life of my phone line not working. Even during the Great Ice Storm of 1998, I lost power like most everyone else around here, but I didn't lose phone service. Also, it allows me to use classic rotary phones as-is.
My mother and my aunt (her older sister) still have landlines too. My aunt has had the same phone number since the mid-1960s.
The masses mostly ditching landlines in favor of glorified walkie-talkies has mostly ruined telephone service though, because most everyone you talk to on the phone these days is on one of those ridiculous little devices and the sound quality sucks. To make matters worse, many people who say they have a landline don't really have a real landline at all, but rather, VoIP, which often sucks almost as bad as cell phones. About the only time I get sound quality on par with what I grew up with in the '80s is when my mother calls, because we are both on POTS landlines.
@@MaximRecoil in the 1993 movie Home Alone , the phone lines go down after a snowstorm and thats why the boy Kevin in the movie wasnt able to phone the police when the 2 bad guys were up to no good
@@tigerintheboro yes, they just work and never have dead batteries
@Tiger in the Boro my parents do for some unknown reason. The only people who call that number is telemarketers and people trying to scam them. They literally give the phone company $12 a month to hang up up on people.
As the film mentions, early mobile phones were push-to-talk, meaning only one person at a time could talk while the other person listened. In the 1960s a friend once called me from his car phone. Every time he stopped talking, I heard about one second of loud static which radio enthusiasts refer to as a "squelch tail". I asked him what was wrong with his phone and he said "Nothing is wrong, I'm calling you from my car."
That's how I wish it were today. Instead of talking over each other.
Yes your right the old cell phones back then worked on an AM band amplitude modulation ..similar to your average cb radio..the real game changer was when they were able to work on an FM band so the frequency range between cycles was closer so now you and the other one person could talk in real time without any pause ..
I can generally tell the former military guys on telecons, because we tend to say, "Over" to avoid crosstalk in a group, just as if we were using a radio. 😂
Many, many thanks to the "old timers" and hobbyists/historians for all their comments. It has honestly been as fascinating to read the comments as watch the video!
The CGI used in this video from the 1940 is amazing
1940’s: In the future, we will have phones in our cars to use in an emergency or if there is a need to relay important information.
2020: People attempting to drive while on Facebook, texting, taking selfies, vlogging and other pointless crap.
😂
Bahahahaaaaa True. Guilty as charged
And download porn, don't forget porn, the reason why high speed internet was invented, so we can share porn really really fast.
@@lowboonkiat73 and the Corona killing virus
But they are not wrong with the emergencies
Having built cellular sites most of my adult life. It was interesting to take a look back at the industry in its infancy. How cell phones have changed in just the last 25 years. The phones in this video make the old bag phones and Motorola "brick" look modern. My generation was probably the last generation to grow up without a phone in their pocket.
You only need a phone if you have something to say. So it worked out well for you.
I had no idea this system was in place a far back as the 40s! This was long before the advent of the trasnsitor too. They really know how to make the best with what they had to work with.
I had no idea these were around when I was a kid. Would have been a nice addition to the go-cart! I could have just called my mom to let her know I was still alive instead of ripping past the house once in awhile. This may freak out some of the kids reading this now but...we played outside ALL DAY! Our cell phones were sticks or whatever else we imagined was a phone.
I remember one time asking my grandson if he wanted to go out and play and he looked at me like I said "Is it OK if I stab you?"🤣
1945: "Mike, how's the construction job going?"2020: "Mike, we have detected a problem with your Microsoft account."
Video: "He called long distance"
My son: "Dad, what does 'long distance' mean?"
Check this out, Joe Friday making a long distance call in 1954. It wasn't until I heard this that it really hit me what a big deal it was making a long distance call in the old days. voxperitus.com/telephone-history/
@john hansberry that's hilarious!!!
And why is he spinning that ring with his finger?
bash.org/?142934
Next questions could be: "Dad, what's an 'operator'?" or "A 'Phone Booth?' What's that??"
In the mid seventies when I was still in high schooI I had one of those portable radios that you could tune in everything from short wave and emergency channels to the VHF frequency that these phones used. Some of the high priced Lawyers , in the Allentown Pa. area had these phones in their cars and I used to listen to them talking to each other about going to see their girlfriends before going home to their wives to have dinner. I rarely ever heard them talking about business during these conversations, it was all talk about their mistress's.
Wow, I just has flashbacks to the days of being a kid in the 70's and having a rotary telephone with a metal dial.
Cool. When is this service coming to my community? I can't wait.
We're sorry, but the number you are trying to reach is not in service, or has been disconnected due to the Gooberment owned FCC taking away that frequency range for its own needs. Please check the number or try your call again after a revolution. Message ID # 1776.....LOL !
It will be available to serve you in about 70 years ago. Please contact us then, thank you.
AKA Carphone.
Soon very soon.
Wait. What if they use this technology to track people?
I had no idea that mobile phones were available in the 1940’s. I’m 62 years old and thought it was only available in the 1960’s. Amazing!
This was very fascinating and interesting. My husband worked for Verizon and he told me that during training he learned about cell phones in the 40’s. I guess he was right.
These weren't really cell phones, they were radio receivers / transmitters.
Cell phones are so named, because there are small areas that are covered by a single tower. These are "cells", and they have some overlap. As you move from one cell to another, your phone silently switches to another tower on another set of frequencies. In this way, you can have a million people in a city using their cell phone at the same time - often using the same exact set of frequencies, but not in the same cell.
These had basically a single transmitter and receiver and they used a TON of power, and only a few people could be using their radio phone at a time.
These didn't take off, because they were no better than a walkie talkie.
Not only mobile telecommunications has improved in the interim but standards of acting too!
Nikola Tesla predicted 100 years ago that people would have devices for information that would fit right in their vest pocket.
Whats a vest
There was a gentleman who worked for RCA back in the late forties. He predicted communication satellites, hand held communication devices, etc. I can't remember his name, but he sure was spot-on.
The cell phone is here but we're are those vest jackets damnit I want one!🌀🌀🌀🌀
@@bcgrittner Are you talking about Arthur C Clarke? While he didn't technically invent geostationary comm sats, he was the one who popularised them. Though hie were a trio of giant manned stations at 120 degrees around the orbit, allowing them to cover the entire Earth. The actual person who first proposed them was a Slovenian engineer by the name of Herman Potočnik, in 1928, though he didn't suggest them for mass broadcasting, simply as relays. Going back further Tsiolkovsky in 1903 was the one to first describe a geostationary satellite.
@@stainlesssteelfox1 You are probably correct. Clarke did, indeed, popularize the satellite theory, but there were others. There was even a theory of radio relay by satellite in Germany in the 1920's. Clarke even considered sending astronauts to space to replace the burned out vacuum tubes in the satellites. There was a Dr. Gary Gordon who worked with the geostationary satellite theory and became part of the team that created the TIROS weather satellites of the 1960's. I vividly remember the TELSTAR satellite from 1962. That was not geostationary, but was remarkable. And, we progress.
When I was a kid there was an older lady in the neighborhood that was a retired operator from Bell Telephone. They trained her to be one of the first mobil operators in Philadelphia. She told us that the first car phone in Philly belonged to one of the Wanamakers of the Wanamaker's Department Store family. I forget exactly what she told it it cost but I remember thinking it was more than most people make. She said he used it a lot. I guess they had the money
Now they literally give phones away. Joke was on them.
@@Anarchist86ed She told us about it in the 70's when we first started seeing people around with car phones. She was talking about the late 40's, early 50's. I don't even know if she said what the equipment cost. It was the rate per minute that shocked us. It was something crazy like 5 or 10 dollars a min. Huge money in 1950ish.
Trading Places?
@@cindytepper8878 I remember getting 600 dollar a month phone bills. My boss was dropping several thousand dollars a month. Ugh.
Why do you women go online and just rant about some boring story no one gives a shit about ?
Amazing that all the stuff that took up half the trunk can now be held in your pocket.
I remember the teletype station in the state hospital where my father worked in the fifties, seeing the output with no one pressing the keys was amazing to me as a child.
I'm having my car door painted with one of these "Equipped with Mobile Radio Telephone Service" signs tomorrow.
ADVERTISING really helps THIEVES! 👍😂
That would be confusing and awesome
Everyone on these old films talked like guys from gangster movies.
Like a scene from a film noir .
Alright, see here, Joe. The dames had class back then, I tell ya. They had class and they had looks. But they weren't easy. A guy had to sell himself. Hard. And I mean real hard. And all the time. From morning til night. One slip up and the word would get around. Fast. This town has ears. He'd never get a date again. Wasn't good enough to be gangster just at the bar. You had to sound tough all the time. Everywhere. Even in your truck. A guy never knew when a dame was listening. And listening good.
"The Boss wants us to pick up a 'special' at the Depot."
lol, I kept getting the sense that a crime was about to be committed. It was like a lost episode of Dragnet. But O my, the wireless communications and those film graphics were incredible. Very crafty people were at work and I tip my hat to them.
This was a special type of radio accent and voice which was created on purpose to be clear. People had to be trained to talk like this
Bell labs were amazing. They also invented cable television technology and had the first operational television studio in the world. They were forced to sell the cable division idea when the government said it would concentrate too much utility service in one company. They also did Ground Breaking Work inventing the first laser.
I dated a guy who worked at bell Labs. I was a young idiot. I never knew his value. 25 year old getting his PHD in physics. Ugh I just wasn’t ready to marry so young.
Several years ago I was exploring the files, etc on one of my older cell phones. It was no surprise to me that I found software and other technology that had been designed and in use in the late 60s early 70s.
It'll never happen.....
Way to dangerous, using a "phone" whilst driving....
If you looked carefully, they didn't include buttons to distract you, you HAD to talk to the operator to make a call. But don't call her Siri, that's probably not her name.
you talk silly talk ,,,,.=^oo^=,,,,
@John C . Our govt has banned it, many years ago, still see people at the wheel with a phone in hand though. More dangerous than drink driving imo.
in case you didn't notice, the man using the phone was NOT the driver, it was the passenger. So, it was Not dangerous, fool.
@@dannygroom3327 - That's actually been proven to be true, btw!
They wouldn’t believe their grand kids will all have a mobile phone, camera, computer, music player, video, GPS, news , game player, bank service, shopping, and much more rolled into one handheld device!
Big deal. All it did was turn them into brain-dead monkeys.
Or on their wrists.
@@AggiePhil are implanted into their brains which is actually happening
And they carry all of that in their pocket or a hand bag
Thank God for quantum mechanical technology.
I remember a Citizen Band integrated telephone system in 80s comprised of two units. One was the home unit with a roof antenna, attached to your land phone. The other was a handset, typically a CB radio. Any call received by your home unit would be relayed to your handset. I was fascinated by that equipment, not knowing anything about future of course :)
I knew that mobile phone service dated from the 1940's, at least in some areas. It was very expensive and had limited capacity, because each base station was a single cell, but it worked. It even predated the transistor. Those big boxes shown in the film were made using tubes.
This reminds me of the old film projector movies that were used to teach us in the elementary schools of the 1960's.
A lot of those were converted to DVD, and I rented them for home schooling. Some of them were really well made and interesting. Unfortunately, the company sold out to Netflix, and they eliminated half of them.
back when two people were in trucks... one could answer the phone while the other was driving. get your shit together people, we need this today.
Too costly! Truckers are going to be replaced by self-driving rigs as soon as the technology is mature enough because it will save the company money and increase profits. You can make a self-driving truck work 24/7/365 only stopping for fuel and repairs and you don't have to pay them. You can only make a trucker work ten hours (if I remember right) and have to pay them too. If you do teams (two drivers), you still have four hours of downtime per 24 and the cost is more than a single driver. If the wheels aren't rolling, the company isn't making money, and due to competition, they have to pay as little as they can get away with to keep making big profits. The first companies to use self-driving trucks stand to make huge profits since there will be no driver to pay and no downtime except for refueling and repairs. The big problem with self-driving rigs is, how are they going to refuel? There are no full-service diesel pumps that I'm aware of.
@Mark Reaves with thinking like that we'd never progress. Technology is to used to ease mans burden, not replace him. In the capitalist west people lose jobs and suffer because of technology whilst in the socialist East people's jobs get easier with the same pay. It all comes down to human greed.
@@NotSoCrazyNinja I'm pretty sure that the big name truck stops will be happy to add full service if they can charge a big enough premium for the service to be profitable.
Soon, no people will be needed. Auto pilot will be common place.
@@NotSoCrazyNinja You still need a CDL to manage a driverless truck.
The first time I overheard a mobile telephone conversation was in a grocery store, I was in Aisle 8:
"Hi, where are you?"
"I'm in Aisle 9, where are you?"
"I'm in Aisle 7..."
It took me awhile to think of cell phones as anything other than an expensive toy after that!
Very cool. I hope I live long enough to see it become reality in my lifetime!
We use this in Scotland it took over from two bean tins attached with string last year.
Bean tins? Bean Tins? You were lucky! Here in out back Aussie we still use camel caravans to pass messages. It's quicker than the national broadband network.
@Gribbo9999 You did it. You had to go and did it. Now the animal rights group will be on your a$$ for misuse of animals. Forcing them into groups when they don't want to and loading them up with things they don't want and force marching them out in that hot sand when they don't want to. Oh hell... here they come now............
Gribbo9999 Camels! Camels!........We'd love to 'ave Camels......our bean tins had rusty ragged ends that used to rip off your earlobe and don't get me started on how many cyclists we lost with our sharp string!
Have they adopted the English "pound" for currency there, or are they still using the more traditional "knuckle sandwich"?
I used to use spaghetti bolognaise tins, but I've since upgraded to ravioli.
Love watching these old clips. Thanks for the upload!
Right bill
Me too
So welcome! It's kinda primitive 😆
I wonder if any of these old units still exist in working condition. I'd love to see a demonstration with a personal FM transmission.
@@jaythomas3180 maybe you can see them at your local Bell company.
Thanks to Joe and Bill, for that fabulously monotone back and forth.
I bought a "cell" phone for my HVAC business back in the late 1980's. It was heavy and BIG but worked OK. It was NOT cheap. I even bought a spare battery (12 volt marine lead acid) so I could use the phone in a hotel room). I also had a pager that I received messages on several times per day (often) and since it was small it was much more useful. Back then there were not many cell towers.
Saying no way, it'll never happen -- whilst watching on my modern cell phone -- fully enthralled
That battery ....wow! 6 volt and 200 amps later!
My Father worked for Bell System From the 1920s to 1960s I remember once when he was a construction supervisor with his own company car , about 1956 or so . He came home one day with his Company car and Said " Look Son , I now have a "telephone" in my car .
can you believe it ? ! THEN he told me , ONE day in your lifetime, ordinary people will "CARRY" personal telephones on them , anywhere, and make calls to anyone they wish , anytime they wish . I predict .
Sadly my dad Never saw 'Cell Phones " but his prediction certainly came true .
I wonder where our technology will be in my sons Lifetime ? Thanks Dad , I NEVER forgot that day, and what you told me way back in 1956 !
Emocionante video de los albores de la telefonía móvil, si bien años antes ya se estaban probando, pero en este comercial ya era a nivel general. Claramente era épico lograr hacer esos equipos, y que fueran prácticos, pero había un incentivo muy fuerte por lo económico, la visión a largo plazo, y la capacidad del norteamericano de hacer dinero con soluciones de todo tipo, y hasta inventar una necesidad que no estaba planteada, es admirable. Un detalle, en ese momento las comunicaciones por radio, no eran Full Duplex, basicamente eran un Handy conectado a la red de telefonía pública. Saludos desde Argentina.
Don't forget about Dick Tracy comics where detective Dick Tracy had a cell phone essentially on his wrist vs a watch. He saw the other person and visa versa. Good imagination from the 1940's.
Or that 60th tv series "Get Smart" with all that secret telephones build in absolute every random item.
I liked Agent 86's (Don Adams) Shoe Phone better in "Get Smart". Now that was futuristic!
"Hold everything!"
Loved the stiff acting, reminds me of the old "Highway Patrol" with Broderick Crawford!
@The Kraemer That was Dragnet, and they did a GREAT bit where Sargent Friday had to make a long distance call, and we heard all the steps it took. It wasn't until I heard that old radio show that I "got" why long distance used to be such a big deal.
It's because they weren't on drugs
This is so remarkable as I didn’t know there were mobile phones way back in the 40’s! I like reading people’s comments because it helps me understand how this all worked. It must have been awful if you were stranded back then with no mobile phone or a means to call for help.
Love the "Compact" Send and Receive Units in the Trunk!
2:24 "Leigh construction company, Martin speaking"..... "Hello George"
😆 This killed me!
Easily explained. His name was George Martin.
I think he had too many MARTINi's
@@stevegallant3395 Wilko @ delta 4 Silko on hawkeye @ 674.673 ° N 985.09° S
Trayfox/ Foxytray 114' ~ 667`` 10 mils. Strait5 @ G N O SW 32..6 ° NE 154° Sea flux and Sunbox * 43 + 58 '' due East... Non Barco or Mapco. INSTIO.
Set my watch on grid bearings; can't get lost.. That's why the Crow & the Swift are so special.
Ok, back to sleep now..For the faithful few; meet you all in Paradise sometime soon...... Bye, not good- bye.
@@stevegallant3395 5
Presentations and voice behind the camera was absolutely divine in old days 💥
I had no idea mobile phones existed in the 1940s, I always thought it came out in the 1960s or even the 70s. It's strange to think that the technology took about 50 years or so (the 90s/early 2000s) before it became affordable for everyday common people. In my childhood in the 80s, only upper middle class or above people had mobile phones (doctors, executive types).
Very rare back then only for the rich and something you only saw on television .In Buffalo New York , there were only 3 car phones in the 60's .
The technology shown in the film is only distantly related to anything we use today. It's not a cellular system at all, and far more resembles a CB glued to a telephone than anything else. It's really not a lot more sophisticated than that either, and wasn't widely deployed.
The first real cellular system that's anything we use today came into use in the late 70s, and early 80s.
I only knew from movies. They popped up occasionally there. Or in early TV. The mindblowing thing for me is that microwave ovens are about as old.
HANDHELD ones started in the 70s and became more common in the 80s.
Only place I could find an explanation of how these car phones work, interesting tech. Going straight to the primary source for information, not bad.
"He would use his regular business telephone to dial long distance" OMG! Not long distance! That used to cost you a mega fortune!
simply cell phone
Yup, and you had to wait until after 5 PM local time or call on the weekend to get the reduced rate for long distance! I remember those days.
Still, my sister won't call more than a few miles away because it's long distance. In Ohio land lines are that way still.
@@bazlebreeze9938 it is just cell phone
And he is having to make a guess where his truck might be at a certain time, to use the right repeating station. Chances are that he'd be wrong more than right.
Just 30 yrs ago, I was a Mercedes tech, and a "professional car phone installer". That didn't last long.
thats real neat... i still use my lexus ls400 car phone it was analog but i made it work digitally
@@NewsBroadcasting Cool, you should make a video showing how!
@@JoeUrbanYYC do u have one installed
This method of commo was also used in the Amateur Radio Service using what was called phone patch. That capability came in handy on those long lonely stretches of highway in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The mountain top repeaters could be hit from the desert floor with a few Watts power putting you in contact by land line with emergency or roadside services.
Great film.The definition of 'compact' certainly has changed a bit over the years. 😉
Good thing that gasoline was cheap back then; needed to be in order to haul around those "compact and neatly installed" vacuum tube radio transmitters, receivers and the extra battery and generator!
I worked for Bell Atlantic and later it became Verizon as a lineman. They showed us this video every couple of weeks. That was in the 90's. Yet we still had two way radios and pagers.
Well, NASA made it work from Houston to the Moon...
@@jojobascug8829 Not quite. The Bell System was responsible for getting the signals from the BIG dish at Goldstone in California (and others in Australia and Spain) to Goddard in Maryland and then to Houston and back. Bellcore handled so much for NASA. It couldn't have been done without them. Nothing came directly into Houston. The network they built is an amazing study in itself.
I'm so glad there are so many videos like this that survived. This is so interesting and educational. I never knew they had this capability then!
If only they didn't plaster them with watermarks and timestamps
A Shout out to the Bell System.. especially Western Electric for making this and so many modern applications possible..
This is good archive footage that shows how far we came from this to our cars of today like Smartphones, Bluetooth, Infotainment systems, etc.
Those guys had no idea how lucky they were being able to "go on the road" and NOT receive phone calls from their boss - or nagging wife.
James haha
@Michigan Wolverine in Dallas When they know you have it, they also know you're not answering them.
nagging wife? MGTOW!
What's a wife?
石尸丹丁丹廾彐丁囗 中仈丹仁片囗 today a wife is a much the same as a boat anchor
I need to have "Equipped with mobile radio telephone service" painted on the door of my car... Bet that would impress somebody!
Chicks dig guys with mobile radio telephone service!
@@HT-ww3zg Ya gotta have something that makes you stand out in this world!
it would impress me
Yeah, but then the girl's pop could call you and say get my daughter home in ten minutes or you'll get what for.
My CB antenna makes people think im law enforcement🤣🤣 and i love it.
I was a late entry to the Bell System and used IMTS in a Bell System Van (Pacific Tel. & Tel.) on the San Fracisco Peninsula (Coast) until 1983. Even at that late stage, there were days I couldn't get an open channel, and dialing was iffy at best; I always used the mobile operator to complete calls.
I did some research in preparation for my thesis prior to my promotion into management a few years later about Cellular Service, past-present-future in 1987. Within that research, I learned that Bell Labs was experimenting with live analog cellular service in Chicago as early as 1926. They shelved the idea, and patents in favor of IMTS as a more marketable product in the near term since the cellular mobile equipment using tube technology would fill a typical automobile. The tests were conducted using box trucks with the equipment in the back.
And I'll bet the clarity and loudness of the calls back then was better than what we have today.
I hope the costs come down so everyone can have these.
My camera makes phone calls...
I miss my bag phone.
@@drmachinewerke1 and corded car phone
My flashlight has Global Positioning Service
gixxer L7 508 crazy talk
My Porno has a Phone
Greetings....My Granddad Henry Levin directed some of these Films mostly for the army
I worked as a telephone operator and we received and made mobile phone calls. This video reminded me of that time. Nice memories.
“Here a transmitter unit and a receiver unit are being compactly and neatly installed.” Hahaha, ‘compactly’
Yeah, I know. Those units are barely compact. But, considering the time frame though, that might have been considered compact.
And don't forget, you MAY need a larger generator and Battery...Just like modern mobile phones.
Yes and if the frequency assigned to the service was busy they had to wait until that call was finished. I was in the business when IMTS existed, in the 70s. With that you could dial a number from the mobile, listen to other conversations sharing the channel but the call to you was routed through a mobile phone operator. Air time was charged by the min. about $3.50 in 2020 dollars. The mobile unit was about $5K in 2020 dollars.
About the cost of Iphone 11
In the days when mobile phones were on either the VHF low or VHF high bands, anyone who had a radio scanner or a tunable VHF receiver could listen in on your conversations as well. Even most cell phones were analog until about 10-15 years ago. There was no way to stop people from eavesdropping on mobile telephone calls until the cellular companies switched their networks to digital modulation.
Indeed, I used a VHF radio telephone back in the day, it had a series of frequencies available for a call, you would speak to the mobile operator. Years later, I had a mobile telephone, it was analog, and had a 5 watt transmitter. This was the first generation of "cellular" telephones. Little briefcase rig. Back then, airtime was about $1.60 a minute, in the 1980s. Yep, the old days. Think about this, one month, I had a thousand dollar bill, hehe. In 80's dollars.
Most folks don't realize, but the later Motorola unit I had, yes, the famous StarTAC, was digital. If I recall, 24 people could tank simultaneously on one frequency, as it used packets of digital data. This innovation is the reason why cellular literally exploded, as one repeater could handle many times more calls.
Today, we take mobile telephony for granted.
My maternal grandfather worked for the Saint Louis Missouri phone company installing telephone equipment in 1917 when he was drafted for the 1st World War. My Father worked for Western Electric Phone Company in Los Angeles after serving in the Korean War. My ex-husband worked for Pac Bell Telephone after serving in the Military during the Vietnam War.
I can't believe this existed in the 40s... Wild!
I wish people still talked like this- slow and calm - today everyone’s so wacked out on drugs -no one communicates like humans -
Truth.
Yes, this is true.
Hanging out with alot of druggies do ya? Maybe it's time to reconsider the company you keep. 😆
No it’s painfully slow! It makes me sleepy
Leave my drugs out of this!!
2:25 Man 1: "Lee Construction company, Martin speaking."
Man 2: "Hello George".
🤣
that's George Martin, fifth Beatle on the right
@@rancher12121 Before he got his big break .
"Yeah what's the matter whit it"
😆
This was the technological marvel of its time. Love it.
Besides advances in technology, acting has gotten a lot better too.