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re: What did people use before cell phones?
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:27 am to tuptiger
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:27 am to tuptiger
You made plans, met up and decided where to go from there. I’m so glad I went through high school and college before the iPhone was out. I don’t remember having a cell phone until maybe senior year of HS, or some time in college. You actually had fun with the people you were with and had far more spontaneous changes of plans, etc while out and about. Now people suffer from fomo and are always checking their phone to see what else is out there instead of engaging with their actual surroundings.
1
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:30 am to Space Cadet
quote:
Payphones, you could put a quarter in and talk for 38 minutes. Or if you were a hacker, you could put in a special code and talk forever (my friend's older brother has a friend who knows the code, he's supposed to tell us what it is when he gets back from England next summer).
Phreaking. It required a digital recording, and if you had a copy of the tone, you could talk forever.
Strangely enough, there was this cheap toy whistle in a Captain Crunch cereal box that helped seize AT&T trunk lines.
quote:
Draper learned that a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal emitted a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that AT&T long lines used to indicate that a trunk line was available for routing a new call.[10] The tone disconnected one end of the trunk while the still-connected side entered an operator mode. The vulnerability they had exploited was limited to call-routing switches that relied on in-band signaling. After 1980 and the introduction of Signalling System No. 7 most U.S. phone lines relied almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling. This change rendered the toy whistles and blue boxes useless for phreaking purposes. The whistles are considered collectible souvenirs of a bygone era, and the magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is named after the audio frequency.
This post was edited on 10/14/19 at 9:32 am
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:30 am to TheFonz
quote:
You'd find a payphone to call mom to pick you up at the Fun Fair Park, or have an arranged pick-up time and you stuck to it.
I remember when making plans and sticking to them was a real and valuable thing. Now, it's non stop text messages changing this and that, and blah blah blah.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:32 am to tuptiger
There were some car phones that weren't actual cellular and used some kind of 2 way radio.
This post was edited on 10/14/19 at 10:56 am
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:33 am to domesticengineer
I see this mentioned a lot and there’s no doubt people are on their phones plenty, but I am out and about plenty and just don’t see this. Sure, if at at the bar with my SO watching a game, we might go 15 minutes in our own world without talking but that’s because we see each other all day every day.
Specifically sitting with others, nobody has their phone out.
Specifically sitting with others, nobody has their phone out.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:33 am to tuptiger
A telephone.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:35 am to stratman
Fax machines. I formally accepted my very first real job with a letter sent via fax. Fax machines were the original meme/dirty joke conduits. The drawer below every fax machine had stack of dirty jokes that you faxed to everyone.
Dial-in voicemail. I don't recall exactly how this worked. Was it a dedicated number people called to leave a VM? Or did you cel and work numbers forward to one inbox? I just remember calling a number and entering my code to get my VM's.
Answering machines. The newer ones would let you call home and enter a code to get it to read you your messages. The old ones used a tape that you hadta rewind to listen to your messages.
My dad's 1st Motorola bag phone didn't "roam." When you were traveling, you had a little map you used to guess the tower you were on. You hadta add a code to your dial-out number. A person calling you while you were roaming hadta do the same. They fixed all that pretty quick.
The OT Ballaz of 1995 had pagers with keyboards. You could text with your pager.
Dial-in voicemail. I don't recall exactly how this worked. Was it a dedicated number people called to leave a VM? Or did you cel and work numbers forward to one inbox? I just remember calling a number and entering my code to get my VM's.
Answering machines. The newer ones would let you call home and enter a code to get it to read you your messages. The old ones used a tape that you hadta rewind to listen to your messages.
My dad's 1st Motorola bag phone didn't "roam." When you were traveling, you had a little map you used to guess the tower you were on. You hadta add a code to your dial-out number. A person calling you while you were roaming hadta do the same. They fixed all that pretty quick.
The OT Ballaz of 1995 had pagers with keyboards. You could text with your pager.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:38 am to Tempratt
quote:My first ever phone call from a vehicle was via HAM radio. Reached out to another operator locally, had them call my mom for me, and talked to her while riding down I-10. That would have been circa 1989 or so. First actual cell phone came maybe 4 years later—bag phone with 30 minutes of talk time included.
used some king of 2 way radio.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:41 am to FCP
Dad used to have a radio service in his company truck.
Had to radio the dispatcher to make the call for you and patch you in.
Early 80’s.
Had to radio the dispatcher to make the call for you and patch you in.
Early 80’s.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:43 am to tuptiger
We made plans in advance. Called the house phone. Paid attention when we were driving. Good times.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:45 am to tuptiger
What I truly miss is being able to leave the house and go do something, and not have to take the outside world with you who can call or text at any time. You could truly go do something and get "off the grid" temporarily and focus on the people you were with and whatever it was that you were doing.
It's happened to me a few times where I'm out and about and enjoying my time with others and sure enough, that phone call happens or that text comes through and there's some fricking bullshite going on (family drama, work drama, etc.) And there goes your great time, ruined. I fricking hate that. But we've all gotten so used to always having that phone on us at all times, being "on call" 24 hours a day/365 days a year. Just as a sidenote, that is why I always roll my eyes when people use the excuse "oh I didn't see that you called, must have missed it." Yeah, right.
It's happened to me a few times where I'm out and about and enjoying my time with others and sure enough, that phone call happens or that text comes through and there's some fricking bullshite going on (family drama, work drama, etc.) And there goes your great time, ruined. I fricking hate that. But we've all gotten so used to always having that phone on us at all times, being "on call" 24 hours a day/365 days a year. Just as a sidenote, that is why I always roll my eyes when people use the excuse "oh I didn't see that you called, must have missed it." Yeah, right.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:49 am to tuptiger
They got in less car wrecks and less people died. We planned more and didn't "wing it" and then call a friend for help. We had more money because phones cost a lot. We weren't near as lazy as these kids today who play games all weekend on their phone.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:50 am to fallguy_1978
quote:. I remember when they went from a nickel to a dime. I would hire roustabouts to work offshore. Would give them a dime to call if they could not make crew change. It only took a nickel so I told them to keep the extra nickel to use to find another job.
Quarter to 35 cents...
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:50 am to Tony The Tiger
That's pretty cool. You must be old, baw.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:51 am to AndyCBR
quote:
Street navigation is the best thing about phones and gps.
I can remember being in an unfamiliar town having to buy a street map at a gas station and making calls from a pay phone for directions.
If you were from out of town it was a PITA.
Waze is the single greatest app ever created for this reason right here. Turn-by-turn navigation and intelligent routing to identify traffic backups and send you around them.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:52 am to tuptiger
quote:
I lived in the age of technology.
You have heard the expression... "living in the moment..."
without modern tech, people tended to "live in the place" they were in.. rather than being distracted by the tech in their hand..
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:54 am to tuptiger
For vacations, this was a must -
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:56 am to Tempratt
quote:
There were some car phones that weren't actual cellular and used some king of 2 way radio.
Perry Mason had that shite
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:56 am to tuptiger
We used to have to send messages by airplane:
That’s why everyone in the past used to look up all the time:
That’s how it was done.
That’s why everyone in the past used to look up all the time:
That’s how it was done.
Posted on 10/14/19 at 9:58 am to tuptiger
My dad's cousin was the first person I ever saw with a pager, and when I say pager, an actual voice would come over the pager to let him know to call the office.
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