12 thoughts on “So this is where it all started, Mansfield ought to be nuked for sailphones!”
Cell phone technology came about in the mid 60’s when some bright boys at Motorola figured out how to make a frequency-hopping transciever that you could carry. Frequency-hopping was just then coming out of the Military as no-longer-secret radio technology.
I saw people were running around in the Schaumberg, IL Motorola plant with them, at that time they were as big as the early (1940s-50s) walkie talkies. Motorola then figured out how to make the necessary custom chips, and CDMA was born. Once cell towers started popping up, it took off like wildfire once the expense started dropping!
Anybody remember hte “suitcase” cell phones of the 70’s? There ya go.
Not sure where these cell towers popping up in the 70s were, analog cellular wasn’t around then at all. There were radio based phones in vehicles and “repeater” services but I never saw any actual first generation (1G) telephones until the early 80s and even then, it really didn’t take off because it was just so expensive.
At any rate, I was involved with the civil design and permitting for 2G cell towers in Vermont, and even into the late 90s it was just this side of impossible to get through a development review meeting without people coming out of the woodwork to oppose the approval of the blight to the landscape. I had one NYNEX guy come with me to a selectboard meeting and when he told the assembled band of luddites that withing 5 years they would be demanding that towers be built instead of trying to outlaw them they laughed so hard they almost dropped their torches and pitchforks. If he had predicted that their 10 year olds would have cell phones they would have tarred and feathered us on the spot! We eventually replaced one existing radio technology tower in North Hero with a cell tower of the same height (165′) and managed to get a single new tower permitted and built on a remote hilltop in Brookfield by the time I left that company in ’99 but that was it. We had some towns that would try to straight up outlaw cell towers as soon as word got out that we were working on a project. When it all finally broke loose in 2000, the company I had been with eventually built every project I had worked on while I was there and more. I guess at that point they were finally popping up. I still didn’t get my own number until the spring of 2001 and even then, service was very spotty up there.
Late ’70s, Matthew. Yes, they were VERY sparse then, mostly in big cities and packed populace areas. As you aptly pointed out, NIMBY was alive and well in the ’80s when the providers started to expand coverage to the “fringe” areas!
Now we have T-Mobile teaming up with SpaceX to have mobile coverage ANYwhere in the USA via the Starlink V2 birds. Talk about a TALL antenna!
I was just a kid, but I remember the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and marveling over the imminent videophones of the future. We waited decades, and where were they? Also in that era, the Dick Tracy comic strip had his “wrist TV”, and that was just sci-fi speculation.
I suppose it took a while to reverse engineer the stuff pulled from the alien wreckage at Roswell.
And now a micro SD chip can hold a dozen or more hi-def movies. And my hearing aids are the best Bluetooth headset I’ve ever had for my phone. I can answer a call, drop the phone in my pocket and to all appearances babble to myself like a lunatic.
Greg, you are a lunatic, at least that is what us nurses thought of lab, radiology, ortho techs…
We were led to believe that by now we’d have George Jetson flying cars that folded into a briefcase. Where are they? đ
But,THEY Said,,,,,,
Yeah, no. I used to shake my head at people with their car-phone packs of the early Eighties, with the users lugging them into their office, the pack requiring a top-up from mains power, âin case someone calls meâ.
Afterward people started carrying the brick GSM phones, that eventually became pocket sized. Great reception and clarity on those, not yet matched by the digital mobiles that we all had to switch to.
Why was this conversion necessary at all? I reckon that it was to facilitate the location mapping of our real time movements, and the eavesdropping capability by Big Brother, with or without the phone actually being used in a call at the time. In case Iâm regarded as paranoid (not far wrong, really), why else would various âagenciesâ invest so much money in purchase of their Stingray units, which enables warrantless snooping on you by the, ahem, âauthoritiesâ?
If such snooping isnât done by a mere software programme listening for key words or phrases, then any human agent listening to me would request reassignment due to utter boredom, because I donât lead the exciting alt-style lifestyle that Cederq does. Heâd have to have an entire team dedicated to keeping track of his movements, the FBI still trying to figure out the identity of the mystery âGuidoâ character they keep hearing being referred to, but obviously a tough, shady sort, possibly an extortionist thug employed by Cederq, capable of âchewing a leg offâ!
Careful! CederQ may send Guido to chew off your kneecaps if you get outta line!
Ask me how I know…
Interesting. I was born in Mansfield, Ohio a month before this article was published. Now I’m living “far in the future”!
Cell phone technology came about in the mid 60’s when some bright boys at Motorola figured out how to make a frequency-hopping transciever that you could carry. Frequency-hopping was just then coming out of the Military as no-longer-secret radio technology.
I saw people were running around in the Schaumberg, IL Motorola plant with them, at that time they were as big as the early (1940s-50s) walkie talkies. Motorola then figured out how to make the necessary custom chips, and CDMA was born. Once cell towers started popping up, it took off like wildfire once the expense started dropping!
Anybody remember hte “suitcase” cell phones of the 70’s? There ya go.
Not sure where these cell towers popping up in the 70s were, analog cellular wasn’t around then at all. There were radio based phones in vehicles and “repeater” services but I never saw any actual first generation (1G) telephones until the early 80s and even then, it really didn’t take off because it was just so expensive.
At any rate, I was involved with the civil design and permitting for 2G cell towers in Vermont, and even into the late 90s it was just this side of impossible to get through a development review meeting without people coming out of the woodwork to oppose the approval of the blight to the landscape. I had one NYNEX guy come with me to a selectboard meeting and when he told the assembled band of luddites that withing 5 years they would be demanding that towers be built instead of trying to outlaw them they laughed so hard they almost dropped their torches and pitchforks. If he had predicted that their 10 year olds would have cell phones they would have tarred and feathered us on the spot! We eventually replaced one existing radio technology tower in North Hero with a cell tower of the same height (165′) and managed to get a single new tower permitted and built on a remote hilltop in Brookfield by the time I left that company in ’99 but that was it. We had some towns that would try to straight up outlaw cell towers as soon as word got out that we were working on a project. When it all finally broke loose in 2000, the company I had been with eventually built every project I had worked on while I was there and more. I guess at that point they were finally popping up. I still didn’t get my own number until the spring of 2001 and even then, service was very spotty up there.
Late ’70s, Matthew. Yes, they were VERY sparse then, mostly in big cities and packed populace areas. As you aptly pointed out, NIMBY was alive and well in the ’80s when the providers started to expand coverage to the “fringe” areas!
Now we have T-Mobile teaming up with SpaceX to have mobile coverage ANYwhere in the USA via the Starlink V2 birds. Talk about a TALL antenna!
I was just a kid, but I remember the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and marveling over the imminent videophones of the future. We waited decades, and where were they? Also in that era, the Dick Tracy comic strip had his “wrist TV”, and that was just sci-fi speculation.
I suppose it took a while to reverse engineer the stuff pulled from the alien wreckage at Roswell.
And now a micro SD chip can hold a dozen or more hi-def movies. And my hearing aids are the best Bluetooth headset I’ve ever had for my phone. I can answer a call, drop the phone in my pocket and to all appearances babble to myself like a lunatic.
Greg, you are a lunatic, at least that is what us nurses thought of lab, radiology, ortho techs…
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We were led to believe that by now we’d have George Jetson flying cars that folded into a briefcase. Where are they? đ
But,THEY Said,,,,,,
Yeah, no. I used to shake my head at people with their car-phone packs of the early Eighties, with the users lugging them into their office, the pack requiring a top-up from mains power, âin case someone calls meâ.
Afterward people started carrying the brick GSM phones, that eventually became pocket sized. Great reception and clarity on those, not yet matched by the digital mobiles that we all had to switch to.
Why was this conversion necessary at all? I reckon that it was to facilitate the location mapping of our real time movements, and the eavesdropping capability by Big Brother, with or without the phone actually being used in a call at the time. In case Iâm regarded as paranoid (not far wrong, really), why else would various âagenciesâ invest so much money in purchase of their Stingray units, which enables warrantless snooping on you by the, ahem, âauthoritiesâ?
If such snooping isnât done by a mere software programme listening for key words or phrases, then any human agent listening to me would request reassignment due to utter boredom, because I donât lead the exciting alt-style lifestyle that Cederq does. Heâd have to have an entire team dedicated to keeping track of his movements, the FBI still trying to figure out the identity of the mystery âGuidoâ character they keep hearing being referred to, but obviously a tough, shady sort, possibly an extortionist thug employed by Cederq, capable of âchewing a leg offâ!
Careful! CederQ may send Guido to chew off your kneecaps if you get outta line!
Ask me how I know…
Interesting. I was born in Mansfield, Ohio a month before this article was published. Now I’m living “far in the future”!
so, it’s all your fault!!!!