What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Join the Dragon Age: Origins development team on Facebook view!
facebook.com/DragonAgeOrigins - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
72 Comments
- CCoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38It's called progress chedabob. At the time, they were probably considered technological innovations, not "***** retarted." I'm sure what we think are tech wonders today will be laughed at by ignorant people like you in the future.
- MadMan459, on 10/12/2007, -0/+35The ones with the hefty, 1950's lookin' telephone handsets on them are pre-cellular.
http://media.knuttz.net/0701/mobile_phones/old_mobile_phones_002.jpg
In the old "mobile phone" days, you'd have like 10 channels available over an entire metropolitan area. No repeaters, no multiple sites, just one big antenna near the middle of the city handling up to 10 phone calls at a time. Basically, it was like a Ham radio setup with an operator to connect your "call" to the landline.
The cellular model took the mobile phone model and automated it, miniaturized it and broke up the available frequencies into blocks. Each "cell" works at a much lower power and instead of covering an entire city, covers only a mile or so in diameter. Each cell (or sector of a cell, in heavily populated areas) uses a different frequency block, so that no two adjacent cells (or sectors) are using the same frequencies.
The big push for digital wasn't for the inclusion of advanced features... not at first anyway, but instead to increase the amount of phones the system can handle. In the analog days, 1 channel = 1 phone call. With digital and advanced compression and time-slicing techniques, 1 channel = 10+ phone calls.
Sorry for the history lesson.. I worked at Motorola from 1988 through 1999 (in the Cellular Infrastructure Division) and used to love digging through some of the old equipment we'd get back from the field. Truly fascinating stuff. - stratmancj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23the briefcase phone is bad ass
- Dvoid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Vintage mobile phones vs. XBox 360 power adapter.
Ding Ding Ding! - mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12My dad used to work for the telephone company back when it was The Telephone Company. I got to see the insides of the phone building pretty often, and one day he showed me the equipment that handled mobile phone calls. It was just a couple of devices, about 4 feet tall I guess, and you could switch the sound on to make sure it was working or to debug it if it wasn't.
He thought it was funny that people would pay so much for a mobile phone and then mostly use it for mundane conversations. He switched it on and sure enough some guy was saying something like "Hey, honey, I'll be home in a little while, want me to pick up something at the grocery store?"
The rest of the telephone office was the coolest thing, because in those days they used huge (by today's standards) rotary relays to connect calls and the entire floor was filled with rows of racks 12 feet tall, full of relays chattering away. it's amazing to me nowadays to think that when you called someone local back then you had a direct conductive metal link to them. Nowadays when you call it's buffered on so many levels it's almost more lke real-time voice mail than like a phone call was back then.
Anyway, when you picked up your handset at home, your relay at the office would activate, and as you dialed your rotary dial, your relay would rotate too, making a clicking sound as it worked. I'm not sure exactly how connections were made, but the sound of thousands of people dialing was amazing, because you'd hear this huge 3-dimensional clicking coming from throughout the building. The clicking was completely random, but sometimes there would appear to be waves of clicks sweeping from one end of the building to the other. Then sometimes almost everything would stop and, you might hear some clicks off in the distance, and then there would be a shower of clicks all around.
I dream of making an art installation one day to simulate the effect. - broh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8where's the zach morris phone??
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Maybe they should go back to the giant bulky style just to shut the damn teenage kids up with their yappin.
(And while we're at it... Get them offa my lawn... damn kids) - jcarmack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't know, the BOSCH one is pretty groovy.
- ouorama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Your ***** grand kid will ask, why are these retarded people using a keyboard and mouse for input. What is that thing they're carrying? A laptop? Didn't people hate carrying a briefcase with them?
- Perno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Motorola StarTAC...best....mobile phone....ever!
- everfalling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4first thing i think about whenever i see one if these is the movie The Big Lebowski.
- flamingmb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4is that an external floppy disk drive on the last one?
- DreKor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How, exactly, do these look "pre-cellular"? I recomend you watch some movies from the 80's and early 90's.
- aaronmcdonald, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4are these Microsoft's attempts to compete with the iPhone now?
- marnaq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4PORTABLE!
- stokelake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Excellent pictures.
If you wanna buy old classic phones you can from here: http://www.retrobrick.com/ (i'm not connected to this site)
Also this is a good site if you are interested in old mobile phones: http://www.phonehistory.co.uk/mobile-phones-timeline.html - Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Someday a LOT of the things we use now are going to seem absurd. Why isn't my DVR the size of an iPod?
That 15" deep monitor some of you still own? Take a picture, because it's a dinosaur your kids will scoff at. - pepe7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The worst part about the old brick analog phones is how easy they were to clone back in the day. One month my wife had over $2K worth of international calls to Nigeria and India which we did not make. Apparently, criminals would set up shop under and overpass along the expressways and use a modified scanner to pick up the unencrypted signals and later clone the ESN of the phone for future use. Grrrr!!
- computergod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I saw a guy who still had one of those phones installed in his car. I didn't see the transceiver, just the headset. Amazing that he could still get service on it. Took a pic of it if anyone wants I'll stick it on my site.
- jstohler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3They're dorky now, but you were the MFing man carrying one of those back in the day.
- teamgwho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3.. or on the bus... or at the movie theatre... or in line at the cash register....
- williebee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I miss my bag phone, that thing could pick up a signal on Mars.
- Falc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3reminds me of those Retro Phone Handsets from ThinkGeek.com
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7830/zoom/
they also have the new bluetooth retro handsets also: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8928/
that would be fun to be in the car and see people make double takes after seeing the old school handset... - PrincessZelda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3For an address book perhaps?
- evilelf2407, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"mista bond don't forget your mobile phone"
"ah, thank you Q" - Nerfdude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4i'm pretty sure i saw Frasier use that one on an episode of Cheers. also, Danny Glover uses a sweet one in Lethal Weapon.
- dalkor, on 09/18/2008, -0/+2This new new is Satellite Phones for sure. It all about being global. Right now Iridium Sat Phones are King:
http://www.bluecosmo.com/shop/product/24/Iridium_9 ... - MadMan459, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No doubt! Back then my first phone was one of those big-assed brick looking handy-phones. (I used to joke that the only thing it was missing were the 3 holes in the side. - not really a joke, it wasn't much smaller than a brick and it was heavy!) I could kick someone's ass with that phone and then use it to call an ambulance for them.
- kibmcz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Grr stupid edit timeout... the correct url is http://imdb.com/title/tt0160277/ .
- PrincessZelda, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3pft. nerds heart history.
- rockyrobins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I miss my Motorola flip phone. It sounded way better than digital phones of today. You could actually hear people thru static...Not like today where it gets all digitized
- spiritamx79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2just looking at those pictures made me realize that im getting old!! i remember all these, and used to use one too!
- CohibaVancouver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The photos were interesting, but it's a pity the site owner didn't write a little info on each phone - Vintage, how it worked etc. I'm sure that's all Google-able.
- bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Weren't a lot of these older phones 3W TX devices? Newer phones are something like 0.3W. I'd like to get my hands on one of these puppies. Maybe then I could make calls from inside my house.
- petermoffat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Man, I remember when I was a kid and I first saw those.. I just wanted one. No idea what I thought I'd use it for, but big sling bags with button were awesome!
Imagine mobiles were still that size. Let's see you annoy me in the restaurant now *sshole! - nonanet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2nice... i actually repaired such phones ages ago in my first job...
- mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Okay, here's another geezer story about phones. One day my wife (now ex) and I were driving along and she saw a billboard that said something about cellular phones. Because my dad had shown me how mobile phones worked years before, I started speculating about how instead of working off of a single tower, a cellular phone probably worked off of multiple towers that had some means of handing off the call from one to another as a person was traveling. She was like "Huh?" Then I realized what was going on and just said "It's a new kind of mobile phone." Yeah.
It's funny for a long time telephone people insisted on calling them cell phones, because they knew about the older mobile phone technology and felt the need to make the differentiation between that and cellular technology. Then when I was working at Ericsson in 2000, someone in the telecom industry decided that they should henceforth be referred to as "mobile" phones, which seemed kind of old-fashioned to me because it reminded me of the old mobile phones. It seemed even stranger when the engineers would refer to them as "radio" devices. Of course, that's what they are, but when I think of radio I think of like, radios! - PaulOwen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7Okay, seeing as I was dugg down for that, here's some proof to back it up. Some current geostationary orbit tracking models
Immarsat worldphone:
http://www.outfittersatellite.com/images/worldphone.jpg
Iridium 9505:
http://www.outfittersatellite.com/images/Iridium_9505_Rental_Kit_200226.jpg
Globalstar:
http://www.globalcomsatphone.com/images/globalstar_rental_kit.jpg
Look familiar? Someone tell me they don't look like those vintage mobile phone systems.
I have to wonder how many people digg down through pure ignorance. - gswetsky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sorry, the second picture is of a Motorola walkie talkie, not a phone (notice no dial!) Railroad personnel used to carry these for communication in the yards and from engine to caboose. I used to own one too.
Gerry - madmax85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My neighbour still USE one in his NEW car.
- MadMan459, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@bradleyland - I think the bag phones, hard-mounted "car phones" and transportable phones were 4 watt max, since the antenna was not up close to you.The old hand held models went up to 1 watt, I think.
The thing is, cell phones rarely transmit at their maximum power rating. You'd have to be seriously in a fringe coverage area for the phone to jack up to max power. - TheLD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1These mobile phones have great anti-mugging devices that modern phones don't...
- kibmcz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ohhhh... http://www.retrobrick.com/nokia9000.html just like the one from the show First Wave(http://imdb.com/title/tt0160277/).
- rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had one of these old ones in my second car, which my parents insisted on having installed (well, none of the exact ones listed, but same deal). The headset was mounted by the radio, and all the 'brains' of the phone were installed under the seat. It was only for emergencies, but even with almost zero calls on it, I think it still cost them $30 a month or so. And back then, the phones were all so expensive they came with the handsfree kits, so I had the mic and everything. That phone, along with my all-digital readout dash, and my car looked like it could be in Back to the Future. Good times.
- coldsteel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've still got one of the old Radio Shack bag style phones that I've kept in the trunk of my car -- it will work in an emergency (at least while there's still phone service supporting the old analogs). The high power setting (because the antenna is on the receiver NOT the handset and away from your head) is about 3 Watts compared to what 1/100? of that on todays phones and is/was amazing reception and clarity.
- thumbup, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3So you're connected with the second site? lol.
- PaulOwen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@plopfrogs
If you're saying that the Immarsat worldphone looks "just like a normal cellphone":
http://www.outfittersatellite.com/images/worldphone.jpg
then you are a supertard. You are the living proof of my theory that some people were born with ignorance where others were granted intelligence.
Similarity, you see is not sameness. I was pointing out similarity by saying "look at the clunky briefcase-style phones of yesteryear and look at today's clunky briefcase-style satellite phones", whereas you were saying "Heh. Its not orange. Heh." or its equivalent in tardspeak. - kkDonut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WAY cooler than the Razr
- stinky180, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i've seen most of these phones in the warehouse storage! these are so damn heavy. the batteries are huge but doesn't last very long.
- baronvonrolo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How many girlfriends do you have then?
-
Show 51 - 74 of 74 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 
