its profound how the cell phone changed the world.
 

i was just explaining to a young person, a prepaid phone card. hahahhaha..

the look on her face. i stopped the story short before i had to explain a collect call. i didnt give it much thought until just now when i had to call an employee that is off on vacation in Michigan. i just called. no fanfare.

i remember phone cards and collect calls. phone cards had to be the early 1990's??

what about prison? do they still make collect calls from prison?

Dude, prison is connected, hooked up, and under ground.....

Try explaining that in order to make a phone call....a person had to say the three digit number to a lady. If out of the area..also give the city and state. (before waiting for a line)

My phone number was 324.
A few later years...they came out with the rotary dial phone. :)

oh yea. the phone operator!!! wow. i vaguely remember that...i was a tiny kid.

remember a phone number that you called to get the time and date? faack. Popcorn? i think the number was popcorn. 767-2676.

There is a company called ICS Solutions that I believe is nation wide. They do the telephone stuff for jails.

I do video chats with clients and if the client has their account set up they can call me. ICS also does inmate calls to family.

I'm quite certain they are making loads of money on this operation.

Another thought on this... We were in Ireland and England in 1998. Everyone had cell phones. I remember in the US we paid by minutes with roaming charges and not everyone had a cell phone.

Yes, profound.

The CMOS sensor incorporated into cell phones has also had a profound impact.

I have met and visited with one of the key players in the development of the latter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Fossum

Great guy.

Working with students now at my alma mater.

the depth of knowledge in this group is also profound. thanks.

Adding to my thoughts about England. I lived there between 1988 and 1990. BT owned everything and even at a phone box you were charged by time regardless of where you were calling.

Even more bizarre was the phone prefix for your area. If calling home from one town to your home you would have a prefix that was different if calling home from another town.

I think ours was (area code)-1212 (might have been the number for information?)

Remember Lily Tomlin on the TV show Laugh In as the phone switch board operator ? Good stuff

i have the oldest desk phone in my office. it has that shoulder pad thing. hahah..i checked and it has a dial tone. it has rang in years i bet.

My mother worked for MI Bell in her 20's as an operator. 1940 till almost 1950
I remember her saying how hectic it could get at times.

Lily Tomlin

https://youtu.be/RT4__Nz5HWY?t=7

Ah, the real good old days when I remember my parents and grandparents talking into a wall phone where they picked the ear piece off a cradle, put it to their ear and talked onto a cone shaped microphone sticking out of the front of the phone. That was after they turned the crank on the side of the box to ring the local operator. High tech in those days in Illinois of the early 40s. I wonder what someone will say in another 3/4+ of a century. I'm sure it will be equally unconceivable now.

I read an interesting article a while back, can't remember the name. It was about how hard it is to write detective stories set in the present, where you can reach anyone at any time, and get backgrounds on anyone with the click of a key.

Cell phones and the Internet, profound impact, to be sure.

How do they compare to TV?

How about radio?

The automobile?

Another thing that's kind of crazy to think about is that not everyplace has indoor plumbing or electricity. I was in the Amazon in 2012, I think. The leader of Brazil was leading some change to try to get electricity to everyone.

Yup. Now you get the propaganda machine at your finger tips. But not only do you pay for it monthly, but you paid a chuck of change for the actual phone!

Pay phones, too. And pagers/beepers.

Pay your dime, and dial up the (local) phone number. Have more change ready, in case your phone conversation ran long. Where would poor Superman change from Clark Kent these days?

And in the time of pagers before cell phones, you'd get a page (invariably in a not-so-nice part of town) and then maybe have to find a pay phone to return the call.

i slept in a villiage in Cambodia where they had a big V8 spinning the generator that powered everything. at a certain time, you hear it shut off and everything went dark. everyone had headlamps. it was awesome.

i remember some locals had cell phones.

The cell phone, and especially the smart phone has indeed changed everything. I think of my smart phone as my brain's spare drive. I have countless notes, and tons of contacts.

I remember the old days of ALL phone equipment, ALL of it was owned by Bell Telephone. The phone almost never broke, but if one had a problem stop my the Bell store, and they threw the old one in a bin, and handed you a new replacement, and walk out. All phone equipment was rented, and a long distance call was EXPENSIVE.

I was dating a chick I really liked. She moved to TX and we called each other a lot. I had a long distance bill that was over 50 bucks for the month, and I broke up with her.

My favorite author is Isaac Asimov. He wrote a short story about the far far future where everyone had a small computer with them that was connected to Multivac the giant single computer so any question could be answered. He described it as glowing letters. No full color, no movies, no video calls or high resolution photos much less a phone to call anywhere for free. We have outstripped Asimov's imagination.

Having trouble with being knocked off the net (comcast cable), Cindy called the help line.

Help line girl led her though the usual plug/plus routines...

But phreaked when Cindy said we didn't text. Wanted to know how we got on the net? Girl was shocked to learn no wifi, no smart phone...just a desktop.

LOL! Yep, we're just analog old folks, trying to survive in a digital world.

But at least we're not always walking into posts while staring at a small hand held screen.

We do have a dumb track phone..only used when we're out & about. Probably wouldn't have bought it except no pay phones anywhere these days. $100 worth of minutes lasts us a year..

Tracphone has really changed over the years. You could buy an ebay smartphone and switch it with your old one.
Then you could read/post on PPOT while out and about.:)
I pay $25 for 3 months service with data.

For a couple of years in the late 90's I made money by switching carriers on my land line.

Sprint would offer me $200 to switch to them. 6 months later ATT would offer me $200 to switch back. I went through several carriers for a couple of years.

And yes, the smart phone has changed our lives. Never before have we had the ability to quickly check for lowest product prices/available at any location, world wide. The internet/smart phone is the biggest inflation fighter and marketing device ever developed.

I no longer have a computer, land line internet, or land line cable or satellite. My smart phone and tablet are my phone, internet, and TV.

Yes, I remember in the early 80s. We had lived on a military base over seas in the late 70s and therefore owned a telephone. We moved back to the US. My parents had a phone line and rented a single phone for downstairs from the telco. Since the place was wired for a phone upstairs, and we had a phone, my parents connected it and used it. I remember my parents talking about the telco calling them and saying "we hear a second ring, but you should only have one phone." I think the telco may have even sent someone out to look for a second phone. Crazy stuff.

My favorite author is Isaac Asimov. He wrote a short story about the far far future where everyone had a small computer with them that was connected to Multivac the giant single computer so any question could be answered. He described it as glowing letters. No full color, no movies, no video calls or high resolution photos much less a phone to call anywhere for free. We have outstripped Asimov's imagination.[/QUOTE]

Pretty impressive.

I don't think about it now, but I remember a few years back when smart watches popped up thinking about...

https://commandwear.com/wp-content/u...cy-970x600.jpg

Yep, had a cat scan at the hospital yesterday and when I got there, had to check in on my smartphone, plus more restaurants are having you scan a thing to get the menu.
We have not only caught up to Star Trek, but gone beyond

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1624041182.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1624041182.jpg

Chester Gould was very proud of his 2-way wrist tv invention.

Me, I'd be hooking those big honkin' knobs on anything and everything around me to the point where it would probably end up in my pocket or in the trash.

My wife and I had the "keep the land line" conversation five years ago.

At my age, having a land line somehow meant "better" in terms of availability after storms, 911 calls, etc.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The physical phone lines in my area are left completely unattended, trees leaning against them, etc. In a hurricane, the phone lines are doneski.

We dropped all physical lines and have never had an issue...and won't unless the Cat 4 hits.

My company is working with Verizon on some UAS projects (all cell phone capability/tower related, post disaster relief) and the engineers have all been very blunt, land lines will not be supported in a relatively few years.

The apps on cell phones have changed everything. The key is putting it down.

If 30 years ago someone were to tell you that you could look at porn on your phone 24/7 instead of a VCR you'd think they were crazy.

I was really, really pissed when they got rid of popcorn. How in the world will we be able to set our clocks?

There are some bargains out there....
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304034298571?hash=item46c9db3acb:g:QcwAAOSwlxFfy0A W

They sure have...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1624046384.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1624046775.jpg

When I was dating my now wife in the mid 90’s I lived in Georgia and she in California with her parents. My phone bill was no joke, $300-$400 every month.

I met my wife in Nov (years ago) in FL. She was visiting family from TX. Between Nov and FL, I ran up a $300 phone bill. She came back for the holidays. She left again, and I was planning to visit TX less than 2 weeks later. In that time, I ran up another $300 phone bill. I visited, got a job, and only went back to FL to get my stuff and drive back. I've been here since.

Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is a PI/Wizard. As a Wizard, he cannot use computers, cell phones, etc. He has to drive an early VW beetle. Wizards kill technology.

Yes, exactly.

The pre-paid card was so that you could use a pay phone to answer your pager. I had both. Unbelievable now to even think how much better AND WORSE life has become because of the mobile phone.

Hmmm. For years my number was seven six seven 2726. I don’t recall getting a lot of hang ups and wrong numbers though.

I think the cell phones have also changed smoking.
In the old days people would light a smoke if waiting or just bored.

Now they have their phone to read/watch/text and distract them instead of fiddling with their hands & face.

They had better hurry up & put a cell tower to service our area then. We don't have cell service here. I think some T-Mobile people get signals sometimes. Duriing times when the power goes off, the land line works & is our connection to the outside world.

Same at our house. At best we get 1 bar of reception. Would love to ditch the land line but when the power is out and there's no wi-fi the landline is the only way we can communicate.