How our great-grandfathers communicated: the oldest phone

It is very convenient to live now, in the 21st century, when you can at any time contact not only with a person anywhere in the city, you can pick up an interlocutor anywhere in the world. And all this – with the help of the phone! But modern models are not at all like the first ones, they were really dinosaurs in the world of technology. Especially the oldest phone.

What was the first phone

The birthplace of the world’s first telephone is Boston. Here, in 1875, through the most complex experiments, Alexander Bell and Thomas Watson came to its creation. They took the membranes that controlled the electromagnets and connected them in such a way that they managed to communicate through them.

However, even before that, attempts were made to come up with some way of communication at a distance. For example, even before the world’s first telephone was invented, the Frenchman Claude Chappe proposed the creation of special signal towers to transmit messages over long distances. Planks were to be fixed on them, they would be set on fire at night, and a specially trained person on each tower would move the planks in the same way as they were located on the previous one.

As for more advanced inventions, the American Page is called the founder of the idea. It was he who decided that electricity could transmit sound, and Bell and Watson brought his idea to mind.

Phone without wires: history

The oldest mobile phone was seen in 1973. But it was only a prototype of this device. He weighed over one kilogram. Motorola inventor Martin Cooper is believed to have called another company’s competitors. The mobile did not have a display, as well as functions such as a calculator or a clock. In addition, in talk mode, he worked less than an hour.

The oldest phone, called "DynaTac", had an antenna and was not particularly attractive. It did not fit in the hand and was not very transportable. However, six years later, a truly mobile device called "MicroTac" appeared.

A fully digital mobile phone came out in 1992, it was Motorola International. At the same time, the company’s competitors – Nokia – released the 1011 model, which for the first time supported the GSM standard and was mass-produced.

Evolution

As for more advanced phones – "clamshells" and smartphones – they were born even later. In 1996, Motorola released the most elegant clamshell, which had only a speaker and an antenna.

Nokia 8110 came out with a display, it was glorified by the film "The Matrix". The keyboard was covered with a plastic cover, on the lower edge of which there was a microphone.

The oldest smartphone is the Nokia 9000 Communicator. She looked like a pencil case. True, equipped with a color screen and a keyboard. It had an integrated Intel 386 processor. And that was in 1997. The very next year, the much lighter Nokia 9110i came out.

So, flaunting iPhones or just smart smartphones today, it is sometimes useful to remember their ancestors, which, although they were not so functional, were considered at one time a technical discovery. By the way, their cost relative to the prices of that time was also fabulous, and wealthy and influential people could afford the first mobile phones.