Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Historical News Databases: Cell(ular) Phone

Hello! I had time after class, so here is the weekend online assignment post. I chose the term "cell phone", and was very intrigued by what I discovered...

New York Times (June 18, 1984)
“Cellular phone” is used in an article about how the new phone will be a great improvement over the older, slow car phones.
Chicago Tribune (Oct 6, 1983)
The article talks about how a lottery may be used to decide which licenses will be approved for creating cellular phone companies.
Los Angeles Times (July 9, 1982)
The article mentions that there will be an investigation into the mobile phone business, due to the fact that AT&T claims licenses in 23 cities uncontested.
ProQuest (August 8, 1983)
The article provides instructions on how to determine whether a new “cellular mobile telephone system” is economically possible.
Project Muse (January 1999)
In an article, cellular phones are briefly mentioned as a technology that is now available.
JStor (November 1985)
There are a few advertisements in this article in which the advertiser promotes its cellular phone service as the best service out there, with the newest innovations.

Looking at these different articles, it’s kind of crazy to think just how quickly cell phones became what they are today. In a few of these articles, they mentioned the semantics of licenses and what companies should be out there and all of these things that I never really thought about that must have happened in order for cell phones to exist the way they do today. Starting in the twentieth century, a lot of different attempts were made to create a mobile phone. The earliest successes were the car phones, which were literally phones in the car. Then came these huge mobile devices that only certain people had or used. And suddenly we came to today, where the cell phone has become an everyday, small(ish) object that everyone has and uses nearly 24/7. Pretty insane, right?

3 comments:

  1. I think it is really amazing how far society has come with the telephone in the car! At first they had those cool old fashioned phones and now that we have entered the digital age, the car phones are now digital. Here is a link to a cool old fashioned car phone. I wonder how much it would cost nowadays??? http://www.netprolive.com/img/mta-car-phone.jpg

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    1. By the way the link is a picture of an old telephone in a car. If you ask me, the lady really looks like "bee's knees" if you know what I mean.

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  2. I remember when I had my first cell phone-It was right after the "camera phone" had come out. Everyone thought it was so awesome to be able to take a picture on your phone and send it to someone else. Who knew that in 10 years, cell phones would be able to play games, have a touch screen, access the internet, and download apps!

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