RADIO TECHNOLOGY USED FOR LONG DISTANCE PHONE CALLS

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Phone calls in the modern age have been able to reach all over the globe, which is because of many factors, the main one being satellites that can pick up the signals emitted by our modern phones and send that signal to the desired phone which then allows the communication between the two phones to commence, however this wasn’t always the case, back in 1946, Motorola used radio frequencies to transmit the caller to a “base station” where the operator would then connect the caller to the requested number via a switchboard.

 

Now switchboards weren’t invented in the 1940’s, the first switchboard used for phone calls was invented in 1888 by Almon Strowger. This switchboard allowed two phones to be connected via physical means with an operator in the middle to make sure that the connection gets to the correct recipient, however this is all done via physical means. The first use of a wireless phone call was by “Paris and Arlington” in 1915, where they made a speech transmission without a physical connection. The first portable wireless transmitter was made by “radio enthusiast W.W. Macfarlane in Philadelphia when he was able to talk to his wife from a moving car 500 feet away”. After that it took a few decades to manage to create “mobile radio telephones” which was completed by Motorola in 1946, this used the Bell system, which can be read about in another page of this blog.

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This system was the “first” mobile phone, however it was fixed to a car and was in essence, a glorified 2 way radio with a long wait to connect to whoever you wanted to speak to, this is because the car phone system could only handle 3 callers at a time. These radios were connected to landlines (which was a key part of their limited functionality as portable/car phones).

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In 1959, BT (after being restrained a little bit) introduced a trial service of the car phone in the north of England to test it out. The first phone call that was made in the UK using this system was made by a mister “Reginald Bevin MP”. The next phone call made was by the post master general, the call was made between his car, at which point was located in south Lancashire, and “automobile mogul Lord Rootes” in London. In essence, a few of the most important phone calls in the history of the phone were made between Lancashire and London. As for how you can connect two car phones, this is a very complex matter, however I am going to attempt to simplify this as much as I can. These car phones would make a call to the switchboard station, (in this case the switchboard station would be referred to as “the exchange” as it would help the called “exchange words” with each other). After making the call to the exchange, the operator would connect the call to a landline, (or another car phone as they were also connected to the landline to allow for this. This car phone technology, however, wouldn’t make it to London for another 6 years, until, in 1965 the prime minister at the time “Harold Winston” made the first call from the capital of England.

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This technology would also be developed further as in 1970, the second version of this technology was released, which was a heavily improved version of the original as it reduced the wait times by including more channels to be able to talk over (as well as one to allow for someone in a car to be called). The way these phone systems would work would be that, to make a call, the user of the phone would lift up the handset, select a channel that was free, and would then proceed to call the operator to ask them to connect them to the number that they want to call. At this time it was still

pretty much a glorified radio as you still had to press a button to speak and release the button in order to listen.

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As for the first time the radiophone didn’t need the operator to connect to someone, the date of this occurring was 1983, the system that they released offered many more channels than the second system as well as more security along with a much longer range than the previous car phones, which permitted the people in more rural areas to have a phone and be able to call people in the “big city”

 

References:

https://time.com/4081211/transatlantic-speech-transmission-1915/ (accessed at 26th Feb 2020 at 1:27pm) https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fusnationalarchives%2F3660047829&psig=AOvVaw0_S3_nBja_WMzoM0-2miaS&ust=1582810660347000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNDenJOs7-cCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD (figure 1) http://www.storno.co.uk/radiophone.htm (accessed at 19th Feb 2020 at 0:42am) http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Car_Phone (accessed at 20th Feb 2020 at 11:48pm) https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/phones-tablets/history-of-the-car-phone-11364282831274 (accessed at 6th march 2020 at 12:28pm) (referred to as “ref_1” in the page.)