[HN Gopher] Bell Telephone launched a mobile phone during the 1940s
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Bell Telephone launched a mobile phone during the 1940s
        
       Author : miles
       Score  : 242 points
       Date   : 2023-01-27 20:17 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
        
       | ghaff wrote:
       | Not the same thing but even in the early 80s, I would use a
       | hybrid radio and landline system when I was on drilling rigs.
       | You'd call the marine operator and they'd patch you through to a
       | landline. Don't quite remember how it worked the other way.
        
         | ytjohn wrote:
         | On the amateur radio side of the house, we had what we called
         | phone patches. A radio repeater with a phone connection.
         | Operating a radio with a touchpad, you would enter a code to
         | enable the phone patch, then do the dialing. This was in no way
         | a private call. Anything said on the phone went out over the
         | open repeater. And even more interesting, any other ham could
         | join in on your call. But ultimately, most hams would not do so
         | out of respect.
         | 
         | While popular in the 80s and 90s, they obviously decreased in
         | popularity as cell phone usage/coverage increased.
        
           | avidiax wrote:
           | This entire video is HAM repeater patches[1] with different
           | automation.
           | 
           | One key thing to note in the video is that placing a call to
           | the mobile unit required knowing in advance what cell the
           | unit would be in.
           | 
           | On the upside, they could ring a particular unit, meaning
           | there must be a codewheel in the mobile unit to selective
           | ring just that one, which is pretty sophisticated. That's
           | roughly as complicated as doing pulse dialing.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopatch
        
             | pugworthy wrote:
             | I was going to say, this looks like patching. My dad was
             | doing this in the 70's (in the car) I believe.
        
             | dn3500 wrote:
             | The codes were five digits, and transmitted as FM dial
             | pulses on 600 and 1500 cycles. The receiver had a toothed
             | ratchet wheel with five pins that would follow the dial
             | pulses. It was entirely electromechanical.
        
         | roca wrote:
         | In NZ in the early 80s there was a "RadPhone" service for
         | recreational boaters over VHF --- you could call the Coast
         | Guard operator on a dedicated VHF channel, give them a phone
         | number, and they'd make the call and connect it to that
         | channel. Of course everyone else with a VHF radio could listen
         | in.
        
         | soperj wrote:
         | Maybe the marine operator would call you, and then they'd patch
         | you through to the landline?
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | Just don't remember. Possibly the marine operator radioed and
           | the radio operator on the rig answered. The company also had
           | its own radio room but it may have been easier/higher quality
           | to use the marine operator for outbound than our main radio
           | room.
           | 
           | But this was all 40 years ago so fuzzy on the details.
        
         | dghughes wrote:
         | My Dad worked for the Canadian Coast Guard. One time (1980s)
         | one of the crew got a call from home on ship-to-shore radio. It
         | was his wife with a non-emergency but she called the ship. The
         | entire ship turned around and went to port. I forget what it
         | was for (where is the chequebook, where is the spare house key
         | etc.?) but it was a huge embarrassment for the guy!
         | 
         | It must be one-way or something like that since it seemed the
         | ship had to go in so he must not have been able to call back to
         | his wife.
        
       | Merrill wrote:
       | 1939 First Motorola Two-Way Radio
       | 
       | In 1939 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced its first
       | Motorola two-way radio. Public safety officers used the radio to
       | transmit and receive voice communications from their cars.
       | 
       | From A Timeline Overview of Motorola History - 1928--2008
       | 
       | https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/6800_MotDoc.pdf
        
       | MrRadar wrote:
       | About a month ago the Antique Wireless Museum posted a
       | presentation about this phone system (MTS) and its successors
       | (IMTS and AMPS) to their Youtube channel:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRqg8INF9s0 The presentation
       | includes technical details of how the systems operated. According
       | to the presentatoin, pricing for the system as of 1946 was $15
       | per month plus $0.15 per minute; that's $200 per month and $2.00
       | per minute adjusted for inflation.
        
       | jimbokun wrote:
       | When the originating device is a land line, how did the system
       | know which antenna(s) to route the call to? And how did the
       | receiving mobile device know the broadcast signal was meant for
       | that specific mobile phone?
        
         | chmod600 wrote:
         | It looks like they had to try a general area (like
         | "Centerville").
         | 
         | To know that it's for a particular phone is easy, just have
         | some tones that identify the intended recipient, and the phone
         | will only ring if the tones match.
        
       | tjohns wrote:
       | More details:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Telephone_Service
        
       | IncRnd wrote:
       | In that video, the phones were used by the passenger of a moving
       | vehicle, or the vehicle was stopped. No drivers were on their
       | phones!!! Please remember that when you are driving your car.
        
       | makz wrote:
       | My father told me about this. Mexican senators had it in their
       | cars.
        
       | jd3 wrote:
       | I first watched this video when it was posted to Periscope's
       | youtube channel 3 years ago. Since then, I've wondered
       | 
       | 1) why this video is not included in ATTTechChannel's AT&T
       | Archives[0]?
       | 
       | 2) why it's in the hands of a private stock footage company?
       | 
       | Periscope says they saved many of the 16mm military reels in
       | their collection from the landfill/incinerator in the 40s-70s[1],
       | but why would Bell have tossed this? Seems bizarre.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDB8B8220DEE96FD9
       | 
       | [1]: https://periscopefilm.com/about-us/
        
         | LastTrain wrote:
         | I was wondering the same thing, perhaps this was a government
         | funded project?
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Stratoscope wrote:
       | If you like this, you may also enjoy:
       | 
       |  _Dial Comes to Town_ (also 1940s)
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/p45T7U5oi9Q
        
       | ted_bunny wrote:
       | On a related note: the fax machine dates to the 1840s -- that's
       | earlier than the Pony Express.
        
       | paulorlando wrote:
       | Loved the view of the units that were installed in the cars. And
       | yet 40 years later AT&T largely divested from the next generation
       | of mobile telephony, handheld wireless, just as the market was
       | about to take off.
        
       | lb1lf wrote:
       | My grandfather was a field engineer with the utility company in
       | Aalesund, Norway; they got one of the first cellular phones (of
       | sorts) in the Aalesund area sometime in the early sixties.
       | 
       | As he recalled it, the phone occupied most of the trunk of the
       | Ford Anglia they used to get around town. It was a fully manual
       | affair - they had a calling channel where the operator would say
       | something like 'Subscriber 11, phone call for you on channel 4' -
       | subscriber 11 (and anyone else who cared to listen in) would then
       | turn a dial to channel 4 and get on with their conversation.
       | After the call ended, they had to manually revert to the calling
       | channel.
       | 
       | There only being a handful of subscribers had its perks - once
       | when he was on his way to lunch with the head of the local branch
       | of the phone company, when they heard on the phone official's
       | cellular that a call was incoming for my grandfather.
       | 
       | He simply answered using the other guy's phone, and the operator
       | chuckled and said that was OK, she recognised his voice and would
       | bill the airtime to the utility company's account.
        
         | mcculley wrote:
         | That does not sound like a cellular system. Mobile telephone
         | systems predated cellular services, which support automated
         | roaming between cells. Pre-cellular systems just talked to a
         | nearby tower and the call would end if one drove out of range.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | Is that the same thing as "party lines"? I'm curious how many
         | channels they could operate at once.
        
           | homero wrote:
           | No it was like a CB radio over a large city or area. There
           | were only a handful of channels. It wasn't a "cell" phone. It
           | was like a walkie talkie. The cell part came later.
        
             | idatum wrote:
             | Or maybe like farmers using electrified barbed-wire fences
             | to chat? Like Claude Shannon used in his youth! Came across
             | this in a bio on Shannon I read recently. And here we are
             | now.
        
               | homero wrote:
               | Now that sounds like telegraph
        
             | zikduruqe wrote:
             | IMTS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improved_Mobile_Telephon
             | e_Serv...
             | 
             | We used to hack the local system as a youth and make free
             | calls.
        
       | Overtonwindow wrote:
       | If you found this article interesting, check out the book "the
       | master switch" by Tim Wu.
       | 
       | AT&T had an answering machine back in the 40s, but they were
       | afraid that if anyone found out a phone call could be recorded,
       | nobody would use the telephone. So they suppressed it.
        
         | sidewndr46 wrote:
         | This seems like it is nonsense. Recording was well understood
         | to exist by the general public in the US by this point. Not
         | everyone had a cassette recorder, but plenty of people
         | understood that recordings could be made of audio.
        
           | kk6mrp wrote:
           | In a world where a phone line was shared between multiple
           | homes, knowing your neighbor may not only be listening, but
           | also recording, has the potential to be much more worrisome.
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | _Not everyone had a cassette recorder, but plenty of people
           | understood that recordings could be made of audio._
           | 
           | Yes and no. They understood that recordings _could_ be made
           | of audio, but they expected everything to be live and
           | ephemeral.
           | 
           | That's why if you listen to old radio shows, very often the
           | introduction includes the phrase "...coming to you _by
           | transcription_ from {$city}... "
           | 
           | "Transcription" is what they used to call recording, and
           | people were almost always told that what they were listening
           | to was not a live broadcast.
           | 
           | It's so common, I have to wonder if there was a period in
           | time when it was a legal requirement.
        
           | Spooky23 wrote:
           | Remember that most people were on party lines. Third party
           | doctrine is key to privacy - maintaining the concept that the
           | call was an ephemeral event is key.
           | 
           | Also, recording and eavesdropping was associated with rogue
           | phone company employees. We don't have strong wiretapping
           | laws because of the foresight of congress. Phone company
           | workers were crooked as hell.
        
             | wahern wrote:
             | The government could tap phone lines willy-nilly until
             | 1967[1], regardless of whether any third-party's ability to
             | listen to a conversation.
             | 
             | Plus, the fact that any non-government person could
             | surreptitiously record a conversation, and that recording
             | be useable in court, didn't substantially change until this
             | century, and even today it's mostly a mishmash of state
             | laws preventing such disclosures, those laws are
             | inconsistent, and in some states there's still effectively
             | little preventing that from occurring. And the ability of
             | the government to leverage third-parties to get around 4th
             | Amendment precedent is still in flux.
             | 
             | All-in-all, I would think the ability, and knowledge of the
             | ability, to record a phone call was entirely irrelevant and
             | uninteresting in the 1940s, at least regarding people's
             | expectations of privacy. But I'm curious if there's
             | evidence to the contrary.
             | 
             | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States
        
               | Spooky23 wrote:
               | We know that now because information is available at our
               | fingertips and we're nerds. The average person doesn't
               | know that.
               | 
               | At the time, AT&T's marketing was all about trust, a
               | mission ethos to serve humanity, etc. They also had a
               | close relationship with government at all levels. Their
               | goal was to avoid awkward questions.
        
           | Overtonwindow wrote:
           | But not Telephone.
           | 
           | https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/spread-
           | answering-m...
        
             | sidewndr46 wrote:
             | I'm not really sure anyone counts "Smithsonian Magazine" as
             | a source.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | Yeah, merely calling them a "source" would be an
               | understatement of SI's significance.
        
       | Luc wrote:
       | Wasn't there a mobile phone system that worked with short-range
       | antennas spread throughout the city (e.g. New York)? You'd have
       | to stand in certain locations, indicated by a sign in the street,
       | to make your phone call.
       | 
       | I can't find anything on Google so I'm wondering if it was a real
       | thing.
        
         | IMSAI8080 wrote:
         | There were several in the UK briefly. The idea was you'd pick
         | up your home cordless landline phone and take it with you, then
         | you could make a call anywhere you saw a "phone zone" sign.
         | Analogue mobile killed it pretty fast and it didn't take off.
        
           | dboreham wrote:
           | iirc GSM killed it. Analog cell phone existed long prior.
        
         | roywiggins wrote:
         | It was a thing:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_%28telecommunications%2...
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2
        
           | kalleboo wrote:
           | Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Handy-
           | phone_System
        
         | PreInternet01 wrote:
         | Yes, it was, and these were probably ETSI 300 131 cells
         | ('Cordless Telephone Type 2'), although I'm not sure any
         | networks based on this were ever deployed in the US:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT2
         | 
         | In Europe, CT2 networks briefly enjoyed some popularity, before
         | being superseded by NMT networks for public use sometime in the
         | 1990s. These were analog and had worse audio quality, but at
         | least allowed incoming calls (CT2 was outbound-only).
        
       | zw123456 wrote:
       | One of the first projects I worked on at Bell Labs back in the
       | day, was a replacement for IMTS called HCMTS, High Capacity
       | Mobile Telephone Service, later renamed AMPS, the original analog
       | cellular technology. I was 2 years old at the time (joke, I am
       | old ;) What was interesting is that during the break up of the
       | Bell System, no one wanted the technology because the marketing
       | research estimated that something like 150,000 people nationally
       | wanted it. But they asked the question the wrong way, people were
       | thinking of it like the old expensive IMTS, not something you
       | could hold in your hand. That came later. It reminded me a lot of
       | Kodak letting digital photography go because the early versions
       | were klunky, and they thought it would never take off. Classic
       | story in tech.
        
         | mdasen wrote:
         | Pardon my ignorance, but I guess I have a few questions.
         | Wouldn't the hand-held nature be more dependent on batteries
         | and technology than on the network technology? NiMH batteries
         | weren't really commercial until 1989 and NiCd batteries have
         | disadvantages. Likewise, advances in chips mean less space
         | usage for many things.
         | 
         | I'm kinda surprised that AMPS uses so much less spectrum. From
         | Wikipedia, it seems to indicate 0.5-1MHz (compared to 30kHz for
         | AMPS). Was it just that radio equipment wasn't as good back
         | then so you needed a lot of spacing in addition to the 30kHz
         | voice signal? Something else?
         | 
         | It also seems like a big part of it would be making the tower
         | spacing closer. The 0.6-3W AMPS signals at 800MHz wouldn't
         | travel as far as the 25 watts for IMTS operating at 35-460MHz,
         | yes? It seems like part of AMPS was betting on a large
         | investment in infrastructure that would allow lower-power
         | devices which would allow for smaller devices because of
         | smaller batteries, yes?
         | 
         | Sorry to bombard you with questions, but I'm just curious about
         | what things might have been trade-offs (like investing in more
         | towers to allow smaller batteries) and what things might have
         | been technology advances (like radios that could discriminate
         | signals better requiring less spacing or new battery types).
        
           | cameldrv wrote:
           | I think the channel spacing with IMTS and AMPS was the same,
           | there was just a lot more spectrum available at higher
           | frequencies. AMPS was allocated 50MHz shared between two
           | competing providers. IMTS I believe only used about 1.5MHz,
           | although the specific frequencies it used were different in
           | different areas.
           | 
           | I think that you're right that it's sort of a cascade of
           | things that made AMPS possible.
           | 
           | 1. You get the capacity from having a lot of towers with a
           | wide bandwdith, but you have to pay for all of them, so you
           | have to use the capacity, so you need demand.
           | 
           | 2. You get the demand because with the higher capacity, the
           | price can come down.
           | 
           | 3. You also get the demand because you can have a truly
           | mobile device, not just a car phone.
           | 
           | 4. To have enough demand though, the price of the handset
           | also needs to be low enough. The prices of the integrated
           | circuits to make a handset came down dramatically between
           | 1970 and 1985 or so when AMPS started to be widely deployed.
           | 
           | The electronics necessary to make an AMPS handset are also
           | more sophisticated because (again to keep the service cost
           | down) you need automated dialing (no operator), and you need
           | to be able to hand the call off to the next cell if the user
           | is moving. This means you need a microcontroller to be able
           | to handle the pretty big state machine of the overall system.
        
         | pbj1968 wrote:
         | Kodak was a chemical company, not a camera company. Stop using
         | this analogy.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | kalleboo wrote:
           | So was Fujifilm and they still exist and have a successful
           | line of digital cameras
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | djmips wrote:
           | And Xerox was a photocopy company and not a computer company
           | right? /s
        
           | ulfw wrote:
           | Nokia was a paper mill company. Not sure what you're trying
           | to say.
        
         | nradov wrote:
         | Kodak was actually an innovator and market leader in early
         | digital photography. But they failed to keep up with other
         | camera vendors and didn't get into the camera phone business.
        
       | spinchange wrote:
       | As a Bell Labs fanboy this is one of my favorite bits of trivia.
       | They invented the future a long, long time ago.
        
       | BizarroLand wrote:
       | When I was a kid I was watching old reruns one day on a sick day
       | and I saw a black and white episode of the Andy Griffith show
       | where some rich fatcat from the city had a telephone in his car.
       | 
       | This was in black and white so I assume the episode was from the
       | late 40's early 50's. I was really shocked that they had cell
       | phones back then.
        
         | hnburnsy wrote:
         | Wait until you hear about when the first practical battery
         | electric car was developed...
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car
        
           | dboreham wrote:
           | Or the first transatlantic cable..
        
         | LBJsPNS wrote:
         | The Andy Griffith Show ran from 1960-1968.
        
       | chasil wrote:
       | A Soviet mathematician developed CDMA in 1935, and their first
       | mobile telephone was implemented in 1957.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-division_multiple_access#...
        
         | azubinski wrote:
         | This is the (traditional to...) transformation of reality into
         | something else. Both of the characters listed in Wikipedia have
         | absolutely nothing to do with orthogonal codes and so on.
         | Unfortunately, Wikipedia can be edited for other purposes than
         | information access freedom.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | Sounds like it was ultimately deployed in 30 Russian cities in
         | the 1960s:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_(mobile_telephone_system...
         | 
         | It doesn't say how much it costs or why it died though.
        
           | orbital-decay wrote:
           | Russian-language version of that article has more details.
           | It's been widely used until early 90s by taxists, bus
           | drivers, firefighters, emergency services, etc, but was
           | unencrypted and had too little capacity for individual use,
           | and also no possibility for billing. It wasn't a _handheld_
           | device either.
           | 
           | The replacement was in the plans, but the Soviet Union
           | crashed and there was no money to develop the new system, so
           | everyone just switched to GSM.
        
           | prennert wrote:
           | Wild guess and it's too late to find sources, but phones in
           | the Eastern block were a highly political thing and access to
           | landlines was strictly controlled.
           | 
           | So maybe there was no incentive to scale a mobile solution
           | that worked for the elite and basic services.
        
       | gedy wrote:
       | In the 90s, someone gave me a prototype mobile carphone system
       | that you would set up outside your home, and hooked up to your
       | landline. The car would then radio back to your home.
       | 
       | It was quite polished and looked like a production unit, but
       | sadly I didn't keep anything. This familiar to anyone?
        
       | adrianmonk wrote:
       | This page has tons of detailed info about old (1946 and on) car
       | phones, including lots of photos:
       | https://www.wb6nvh.com/Carphone.htm
        
         | azubinski wrote:
         | Thanks
        
         | programd wrote:
         | What a great link!
         | 
         | Speaking of car phones, one of the best depictions of a car
         | phone was in the 1958-1961 show "Peter Gunn", a cracking good
         | film noir TV series. Gunn had a car phone in his very cool 1959
         | Plymouth Sport Fury Convertible (I so wish tailfins were still
         | a thing...) There's a picture of his phone from the show [1]
         | which seems to match the Western Electric model from the above
         | link [2].
         | 
         | Anyway, watch the show if you can find it - the epitome of
         | jazzy noirish cool.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/peter-gunns-mobile-car-
         | phone--...
         | 
         | [2] https://www.wb6nvh.com/MTSfiles/Carphone1.htm
        
           | LBJsPNS wrote:
           | Some of the best music ever committed to a TV series was on
           | that show. Musically, it's the 50s' WKRP In Cincinnati.
        
       | Johnny555 wrote:
       | That's not exactly a mobile phone, the "phone" handset in the car
       | has a push to talk button that you'd have to push when you want
       | to talk, just like keying a microphone, it was single-duplex
       | communication just like a radio.
       | 
       | The other end was just a patch between the radio network and
       | telephone network, which was relatively common before cell
       | phones, my dad could make calls from his company two way radio
       | back in the 70's by asking dispatch to route him through to a
       | phone, they'd make the call and tell him what channel to switch
       | to for he call. And of course there was no privacy, anyone on
       | that channel could listen (or talk) to your call.
        
         | jimktrains2 wrote:
         | By "single duplex" do you mean simplex (versus a single duplex
         | channel, which would allow simultaneous 2-way communication)?
        
           | Johnny555 wrote:
           | I think it's more "half duplex" - either side can transmit,
           | but over a single channel so only one at a time.
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | in a similar style, there were radio based lane tracking
       | installed in some highways so your car could stay centered.. it's
       | funny how far back these ideas were tried
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | Similar technology used for instrument landings (ILS) at
         | airports. A radio beacon is centered on the runway and in poor
         | visibility pilots can use it to be sure they're lined up and on
         | the correct approach path before they can see the runway.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | Ah thanks, makes sense.
        
       | hendrikrassmann wrote:
       | The talking on the phone bit at the beginning reminds me of
       | Erlang, The Movie: https://youtu.be/xrIjfIjssLE?t=205
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | When did we stop calling things radios and start calling them
       | mobile phones?
        
         | pak9rabid wrote:
         | Probably with the transition from analog to digital.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | I remember using analog cell phones, and everyone called them
           | cell phones (or cellular phones).
        
           | acdha wrote:
           | It was much, much earlier than that - analog car or suitcase
           | phones were well known before digital arrived. It was a trope
           | in 80s movies or TV to have someone use one since it meant
           | they were rich and/or important.
           | 
           | My assumption is that the nomenclature came from buying one
           | from the phone company. There were other radios around but
           | they weren't interoperable with the phone network.
        
           | fIREpOK wrote:
           | Digital phones are still relatively new
        
         | IncRnd wrote:
         | Probably when we could make calls to and from regular phone
         | numbers from portable phones.
        
       | ztetranz wrote:
       | I'm old enough to remember Cannon.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_(TV_series)#Props
        
       | davidw wrote:
       | I think we lost something when we lost that accent for news.
        
         | tomcam wrote:
         | Although some things are eternal. The film clearly shows that
         | Ben Shapiro was already at work as some sort of assistant truck
         | driver, maybe putting himself through law school. Who knows,
         | maybe he should kept that gig.
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | pjungwir wrote:
       | Bell launched a video phone too, back in the 60s. You can read
       | about it in _The Idea Factory_ , which is full of fascinating
       | history. That book attributes the failure to people not wanting
       | to be seen. I've worked with people who definitely didn't want to
       | turn on their video on Zoom calls! :-/
        
         | tomcam wrote:
         | There was a working version of it at Disneyland.
        
         | jamesbfb wrote:
         | And here's a great video about said video phone:
         | https://youtu.be/Xqb1o8up_Fw
         | 
         | I'm scratching my head trying to figure out the mechanism of
         | that top down camera.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | I worked for a telecommunications product company a while ago,
         | and while all employees were given videophones (and there were
         | _conference_ videophones too), and actually used them quite
         | frequently compared to IM, they were almost always used in
         | audio mode only.
         | 
         | Besides not wanting to be seen, it takes far more attention to
         | be looking at each other than it does to be talking while doing
         | other things.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | Yeah. I don't mind switching video on and do by default in a
           | smaller meeting and certainly 1:1. But, if I'm multitasking
           | I'll regularly switch the camera off if I can't/don't want to
           | be front and center with the webcam and keylight.
        
         | thinking4real wrote:
         | It's more comfortable not to be seen (you don't have to look
         | certain ways), but also I'm not about the idea that anyone can
         | record me and use my image for whatever reason they want
         | 
         | When I'm compensated like a celebrity, Ill take on the risk.
         | Till then, you don't need to see my face to know what I'm
         | saying
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | permo-w wrote:
           | the thing that bothers me about video chat is the live video
           | of myself in the corner. I find it incredibly distracting
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | My sense is that video became widespread when networks got good
         | enough that it was effectively free if you were going to use
         | the network for audio anyway. There were companies like
         | PictureTel but I'm pretty sure both the equipment and
         | operational costs weren't things that consumers were going to
         | pay.
         | 
         | There may have been social resistance early-on as well but I'm
         | sure grandma would have liked to see the new baby if the tech
         | were cheap and easy--even if people then, as now, don't
         | universally want to be on camera.
        
       | onetokeoverthe wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | rmason wrote:
       | When I was just starting elementary school in Detroit my best
       | friends dad was a high power exec who had a radio phone. He would
       | sometimes take me to school as they lived just down the street. I
       | never saw him use the phone but my father told me once there was
       | a very small number available for the city and it was quite
       | expensive.
        
         | Spooky23 wrote:
         | A friend obtained a scanner that allowed you to hear one side
         | of those conversations for mobile and marine radio.
         | 
         | We used to listen once in awhile.
         | 
         | One guy in particular was hilarious - he'd call to let the wife
         | know the plane was delayed and he'd be home late, then call his
         | girlfriend to have her drop by the boat. The dude would talk in
         | very obvious "code". "Need some help with the salami", etc.
        
           | joezydeco wrote:
           | Back in the USENET days it was pretty common knowledge if you
           | took a Bearcat 200XLT and removed a resistor you could tune
           | into the analog cellular frequencies.
           | 
           | http://textfiles.com/hamradio/MODIFICATIONS/bc200xlt.txt
           | 
           | It worked pretty well although it was half duplex so you only
           | heard one side of the conversation. Sometimes the speaker
           | bled into the mic and you could hear a little more.
        
           | Eleison23 wrote:
           | [dead]
        
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