Back in the 1990s, pagers were a real hit overseas – today they are just a relic of the past. What are the great-grandfathers of smartphones and how do they work?
In the 1950s, the first pagers were created, i.e. simple devices that we can call the ancestors of mobile phones. Initially, they were a popular tool among public services and specialists from technical industries, and over time they became a youth communicator, to finally end their history as a tool for servicing shady business in the hands of shady types. Where do they come from and how do they work?
Once upon a time, one message was enough – a short history of pagers
In 1973, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x appeared – a device considered to be the first mobile phone. However, before we, as humanity, reached the equipment that evolved into the smartphone, the foundations for a new way of communication were laid by an American engineer, Alfred J. Gross – a pioneer in the field of radio and wireless communication.
This small device for receiving messages was used, among others, in hospitals – doctors could quickly be called to see patients outside their workstations. The first revolution can be traced back to 1962, when Bell System presented Bellboy, the first commercial paging system. The pager used short sound signals to inform the user about the need to contact a specific person.
However, it was only in the 1990s – at a time when cell phones were a well-known but expensive technology – that pagers became popular among ordinary people. American rappers had a significant impact on the popularization of pagers among young people, who, at the threshold of the new millennium, included references to pagers in their songs. Pagers at that time were no longer just ordinary “notifiers”. These devices were capable of receiving short text messages, which significantly increased their usefulness. Their popularity was also influenced by the reliability of the device itself. Pagers used stable radio signals and could boast a relatively wide range – which cannot be said about mobile phones of the time.
Due to the fact that these were devices with limited functionality and devoid of unnecessary bells and whistles, they were also very easy to use and very energy efficient – pagers could last for weeks on the battery, and what’s more, they were not expensive, so replacing the device with a new one did not significantly strain the device. home budget. Okay, but how do pagers actually work?
One-way communication
I mentioned that pagers were used for communication, but this is an oversimplification. However, it was not the kind of communication we know from today’s smartphones. In the case of pagers, we are talking about one-way exchange of messages, because pagers are only capable of receiving messages, operating on the principle of a radio receiver.
Each pager is associated with a broadcasting network serving a specific region – e.g. local, national or international. The stations sent radio signals on specific frequencies, dedicated only to communication with pagers – these were characterized by a unique CAP code, something like a telephone number. Contacting the transmitting station and entering the pager’s CAP number allowed sending a short message because the device was “listening” to its frequency all the time.
The twilight of pagers
If they were such cheap, reliable and easy-to-use devices, why did pagers end up in the dustbin of technological history? Well, the main reasons are dynamically changing user expectations and greater availability of mobile phones. These – when they became cheaper – opened access to text messages, mobile Internet, simple games, and later to social media.
However, this does not mean that pagers have completely disappeared. To this day, they are used in limited cases in health care, places with poor network coverage, in the aviation industry or on military bases, because pagers do not send outgoing signals and do not have a GPS function, which is why they are more difficult to track – for the same reason they are still used by criminals for internal communication. You may also encounter them in food courts or at food truck festivals – the beeping and glowing devices that notify customers about the possibility of collecting their ready order are nothing more than simple pagers.
Stock image from Depositphotos
Source: antyweb.pl
