General Chat

My late husband had one in 1987, it was the size of a house brick, you had to go through an operator to connect the, call also had huge battery in the boot. It's amazing how they have developed in thirty years.

First one I saw was about a foot square a four foot-ish aerial and a handset on the box.....
was a firm associated with Babcocks, installing Agv's in a automated engine test shop........

I got my first "brick" in 1987 from Hutchinson Whampoa. By that time they were down to about 500gm. The carphone was a completely separate fitting hands free. And so began the demise of the P.A. and working round the clock.

AFAI remember the charge lasted for about a week. At that time they all came with "call forwarding" and "follow me" which made it ez to patch yr calls into a land line. Now that is an extra. Thanks to the huge battery and power getting a signal was not the hassle it often is today. In the USA they were known as cellphones - Stephen King wrote a novel about them "Cell".

The monthly fee was far less than employing a receptionist/PA but far too high for most people on PAYE. Calls cost a bomb too.

New Year’s Eve mobile phone call that made history and started a new era.

Thirty years ago, the son of Vodafone’s former chairman Sir Ernest Harrison secretly ducked out of the family’s New Year’s Eve party. A few hours later, just after midnight and standing in the shadow of Big Ben in Parliament Square, he called home to wish his father a Happy New Year – and that was the UK’s first ever mobile phone call.

Michael Harrison had dragged the 5kg (11lbs) briefcase-sized prototype phone with him to make the call in a dummy run hours before comedian Ernie Wise was due to make the first official mobile phone call from St Katherine’s Docks in London.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/31/new-years-eve-mobile-phone-call-made-history