- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
Comment on this latest article by @Thande here.
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Writing AH: Anachronisms Part 3. A Time Before Phones.
- Thread starter David Flin
- Start date
- Location
- Derbyshire
And of course everyone still knows thar a sort of squished U is the symbol for phones and voice calls even though all the phones are rectangles.
Here's that AT&T video from Youtube about the introduction of dialling I mentioned:
Arthur_Phuxache
Double Points Friday
- Location
- Greater Doncastrian Empire
This article reminds me of the time when I was intensely resistant to the mere idea of owning a mobile telephone.
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
- Location
- Colwyn Bay/Manchester
- Pronouns
- He/him
From some stuff I've seem on social media lately, I'm getting the impression some teenagers don't realise mobile phones weren't smart as soon as they became a thing.
That, or they just think they're older than they are.
EDIT: And in my experience people in casual conversation use "dumb phone" over "features phone"
That, or they just think they're older than they are.
EDIT: And in my experience people in casual conversation use "dumb phone" over "features phone"
Pete U
Temporary Gentleman Of Leisure
- Location
- South Notts
One thing that is notable about mobile phone evolution is the change in size over time - from the original bricks, down to fairly small things that were very easy to lose (I had a friend who worked for Motorola who lost about half a dozen phones in a year because they were so small*) and then a gradual increase in size as smart phones evolved into the multi-function streaming devices we have now. Which are too big to fit in pockets in some cases.
It's fun in 90s shows where someone has a mobile and you can see it get smaller & smaller as 'what a phone looks like' changes.
Arthur_Phuxache
Double Points Friday
- Location
- Greater Doncastrian Empire
Ah yes, the famous "at which point did manufacturers realise watching porn on your phone was a thing"
I remember when people said it was unrealistic that communicators in Star Trek seemed to get both bigger and smaller in different series set in different time periods made out of order. The same people who think it's odd that Starfleet has a new uniform every few years, evidently not having paid attention to what real militaries are often like.
- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
Margaret Beckett once recalled being a speaker at a mobile phone conference, and she said that all the men were boasting how small theirs was.
Depictions of the "near future" from that era extrapolate on that trend and show phones of the future as tiny. The idea that we would instead turn to larger screens was mostly ignored. Then again, when contemporary SF tries to come up with a future equivalent to the smartphone, it's often an entirely transparent device, which would be a complete nonstarter, because a) that would make the display harder to see and especially b) do you really want everyone to know what you're looking at?
A point, but on the other hand the transparent phone seems like exactly the sort of daft thing that people would embrace as a fashion fad, at least for a while.Depictions of the "near future" from that era extrapolate on that trend and show phones of the future as tiny. The idea that we would instead turn to larger screens was mostly ignored. Then again, when contemporary SF tries to come up with a future equivalent to the smartphone, it's often an entirely transparent device, which would be a complete nonstarter, because a) that would make the display harder to see and especially b) do you really want everyone to know what you're looking at?
Not bad, but this remains the best 1920s cartoon (alright, technically 1919) about predicting phone technology.I'm reminded of this 1920s cartoon:
Space Oddity
Hold on, hold on, tomorrow will be there.
- Location
- Baselland
In German, the word for a mobile phone is “ein Handy” - a great example of German taking an English word and using it in a way that would be far from obvious to native English speakers.
Switzerland, of course, took its own path. In the Seventies, the PTT (equivalent of the old British GPO) launched a mobile phone service for cars called NATEL (short for Nationales Auto-TELefonnetz). For many years the Swiss used the word “Natel” for mobile phones, though that does seem to have died out now.
Switzerland, of course, took its own path. In the Seventies, the PTT (equivalent of the old British GPO) launched a mobile phone service for cars called NATEL (short for Nationales Auto-TELefonnetz). For many years the Swiss used the word “Natel” for mobile phones, though that does seem to have died out now.