I remember when..............
When I was a boy we had a phone. My kids have never seen a phone like the one that we had. First, it is important to remember that in our house we had ONE phone. The phone was black. As I recall, at that time, black was the only color available for phones. But maybe not, maybe ours was just black. To use this phone you had to "DIAL" the number. Yes, you placed your finger into the correct hole, and you "dialed" or turned the dial all the way to the right until you hit the stop and then you released it. You had to dial seven numbers in order to connect with anyone. If the number you were dialing was not a local number, then you simply dialed "zero" for the operator.
Well, time brings progress. When I was an older teen, our phone changed. Now we still had the same phone number, but now our phone had buttons that you pressed. Our phone system was not very up-to-date, so you had to move a switch on it from "tone" to "pulse". When you pressed a number, if you were holding the handset to your ear you could hear it dialing. Within time however, even our phone system updated and we too had tone dialing. Man, as soon as you finished pressing the last number of the person you were calling, you were immediately connected.............just like that. Ahh, the miracles of modern technology.
When I was around age 20, I made this huge purchase. I bought a cordless phone. That's right. A totally new concept. A phone without a chord. I could place a call and walk around all over the house. Heck, I could even go outside, as long as I didn't walk too far, and still stay connected on the phone. I couldn't imagine at that time that technology could ever improve on this.... a phone that worked seeminly by magic. You just had to remember to place the phone on its craddle when you wasn't using it to keep the batteries charged. But all in all, this was absolutely amazing.
Then again, over time, technology just got better and better. Soon there was these very cool things called beepers. Someone could dail a number and your beeper, a little thing about the size of a pack of cigarettes would beep. But these were only for the very wealthy; people like doctors. Because you had to have someone that you had to call to find out who you needed to call. That wasn't a problem though, pay phones were plentiful, and it only cost a dime to call your paging service. I never had a beeper. I'm not a doctor. It wasn't long though until technology improved yet again, and along came digital papers. Someone could call your pager number, however now on your beeper there was this tiny little screen. And on the screen would be displayed the number to which you needed to call once you found a pay phone.
After this was voice pagers. Someone could call your number and leave a message. Your pager would beep, and you would press a button, and BAM, the next thing you heard was the message of the person that had left you a message. You could actually hear their message. WOW !!! This was waaay cool. I still wasn't a doctor, but I had a voice pager. My wife was the biggest user of my voice pager................. There I would be, working with someone on something really important and suddenly my pager would go off. I would reach down, press the button, and hear the crucial message that she just had to leave......................."Honey, we are out of bread. Please stop and get some on your way home.....and oh yeah, I need some pantyhose." As I remember, the service was around $30 per month, and each message cost an additional 2 cents or something like that. Yep, I had arrived, I had a pager.
Time of course has a way of making current technology look archaic. Somewhere around 1987 or 1988 I joined the ranks of those that had a mobile phone. That's right, a phone that you could have in your car. Except, I was way to cool to be limited to having to be in my home or in my car to make a call, oh no, I had to have a portable mobile phone. It was beauty. Phone, battery, and case combined was about the size of a medium ladies purse. But boy was I cool !!! All that I had to do to make a call was open it up, place the antenna pointing up, press the numbers, then press send, and BAM, I was talking..............just like that ! Again, my memory is somewhat clouded, but I think I paid $28.00 per month plus something like 35 cents per minute for that service.
Time again replaced what seemed to be space age in concept and design, and it was not long before cell phones were the size of a credit card, and everyone and their brother had one. Then came smart phones. Cell phones that also had the internet (we haven't even talked about that). A cell phone that you could not only talk on, but also connect to the internet on.
Heck, I haven't even mentioned texting...................
Now here I sit in my apartment. Beside me are my landline phone, my personal cell phone, my work cell phone, and on my lap is my laptop. I am one connected man.
Technology has taken an amazing concept, the phone, and it has developed into a marval of modern technology. Our phones are miniture computers, word processors, mini-televisions; they seem to do it all. And you know what I just did?
I just added Google Talk to my laptop. Yep, now I can make phone calls to any phone in the world right from my laptop............. What was I thinking? Maybe I needed to call someone and just to make sure it would not be a problem, I added the capability on my laptop to make phone calls. Oh yeah, I needed that !!!
When I was 19, my Daddy passed away. The year was 1977. He never even saw a cell phone. If he needed to talk to someone he would go and see them. Of course, he did use the phone too, but my point is that he used the best form of communication possible. He looked at them while he talked to them. Imagine that.
...................Anyway
My phone has the internet, and my computer can make phone calls. Technology marches on.
Hey, if you get bored, just give me a call.............
Later.
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