Doug Kerr
Well-known member
I had been a telephone engineer (in one sense or another) since about the age of 13, and a photographer from not too much later.
I was not at first able to believe that the cellular wireless mobile telephone would one day come to be almost everybody's normal kind of telephone, and I certainly couldn't believe that one day the mobile telephone would become almost everybody's favorite kind of camera.
When I formally entered the telephone industry, in 1956, my home town, Cleveland (like many cities) was served by the Mobile Telephone System (MTS), operated by Ohio Bell Telephone Company. There was also a competitive system, established under a regulatory concept that would be the model for the cellular system many yeas later. The two systems used completely different and incompatible protocols.
The system (which by then included channels in both the 30-50 Mhz and 155 Mhz bands) had 12 channels for the Cleveland metropolitan area (with a population then of over 1 million). The system did not provide for frequency reuse, and so this meant a maximum capacity of 12 simultaneous conversations at any time for the entire metropolitan area. (There were other channels in the repertoire, but they were assigned to neighboring cities, such as Akron, Canton, and Youngstown.)
Today at a football game we would have 12 simultaneous conversations in any given row of seats!
And the basic station arrangement only allowed you to use one of those channels, so if it was busy, but others were idle, you were just out of luck. For an extra charge, you could have a station that allowed (manual) access to several of the channels.
The system was totally manual, with both originating an terminating calls handled by a special operator. There was no privacy. If you took the handset out of its holder, you would hear whatever conversation was going on at the moment on your home channel.
The telephone companies preferred that customers only lease their mobile stations from the telephone company (following the policy that was mandatory at the time for "landline" phones), but a court decision had demanded that customers be allowed to provide their own stations, subject to their being technically "vetted" by the telephone company. One could of course not buy such a thing in any kind of store, so that hardly ever happened.
I decided that I should have an MTS station in my 1956 Chevy (my mother's, actually). I mooched a Western Electric 38A receiver (half of an orthodox MTS station) from the Ohio Bell Mobile Radio shop (it was about to be scrapped as it had a dent in the cover). I had to have the orthodox receiver since it included the address decoding equipment required to operate in the system.
I wasn't able to "promote" the complementary transmitter, but there were not any (seriously) peculiar requirements for it, so I bought a Motorola FMR series transmitter (old time mobile radio guys will recognize it as a "turkey oven" style) from a guy in Steubenville, Ohio (he bought a batch that were being surplused by the Atomic Energy Commission).
I designed and fabricated the special cabling harness needed to connect up this "odd couple", and installed in in the car.
I went through the necessary formalities with Ohio Bell (the engineering guy who did the technical "vetting" sat at the next desk from me, and I was from time to time loaned to his department), was assigned a number (I got a "roaming" number that was unique nation-wide, so I could use my station in other cities) and become a recognized system customer
My number was YJ5-4284. The "YJ" told what channel I received calls on, and "54284" was my address code (the way the electromechanical decoders worked, all the digits of any valid number added to 23).
One evening in late 1958 I was sitting in the car outside the home of one of my buddies, shooting the breeze. The MTS phone rang. It was a call from a young lady we knew, who had been engaged to one of my best friends. She was a beautiful 19-year old redhead with a stunning figure (see a pattern here?), of Hungarian-Polish ancestry, originally from Brooklyn, New York. She ran the office for a practice of three Jewish internists.
She had called to report that the engagement was off (quite a story in itself), that she was very sad, and wondered if I would come over to console her. Of course I did.
One thing led to another, and in June, 1960, we were married. We were married until her tragic death from a heart attack late in 1997.
So you can see why I never thought that a cellular wireless mobile telephone would come to be almost everybody's "telephone".
In any case, the first time, in 1997, Carla called me, it was from the "landline" phone at her office to the "landline" phone at my house.
Sometimes we progress, and sometimes we retrogress.
Well, that's enough autobiography for now.
Best regards,
Doug
I was not at first able to believe that the cellular wireless mobile telephone would one day come to be almost everybody's normal kind of telephone, and I certainly couldn't believe that one day the mobile telephone would become almost everybody's favorite kind of camera.
When I formally entered the telephone industry, in 1956, my home town, Cleveland (like many cities) was served by the Mobile Telephone System (MTS), operated by Ohio Bell Telephone Company. There was also a competitive system, established under a regulatory concept that would be the model for the cellular system many yeas later. The two systems used completely different and incompatible protocols.
The system (which by then included channels in both the 30-50 Mhz and 155 Mhz bands) had 12 channels for the Cleveland metropolitan area (with a population then of over 1 million). The system did not provide for frequency reuse, and so this meant a maximum capacity of 12 simultaneous conversations at any time for the entire metropolitan area. (There were other channels in the repertoire, but they were assigned to neighboring cities, such as Akron, Canton, and Youngstown.)
Today at a football game we would have 12 simultaneous conversations in any given row of seats!
And the basic station arrangement only allowed you to use one of those channels, so if it was busy, but others were idle, you were just out of luck. For an extra charge, you could have a station that allowed (manual) access to several of the channels.
The system was totally manual, with both originating an terminating calls handled by a special operator. There was no privacy. If you took the handset out of its holder, you would hear whatever conversation was going on at the moment on your home channel.
The telephone companies preferred that customers only lease their mobile stations from the telephone company (following the policy that was mandatory at the time for "landline" phones), but a court decision had demanded that customers be allowed to provide their own stations, subject to their being technically "vetted" by the telephone company. One could of course not buy such a thing in any kind of store, so that hardly ever happened.
I decided that I should have an MTS station in my 1956 Chevy (my mother's, actually). I mooched a Western Electric 38A receiver (half of an orthodox MTS station) from the Ohio Bell Mobile Radio shop (it was about to be scrapped as it had a dent in the cover). I had to have the orthodox receiver since it included the address decoding equipment required to operate in the system.
I wasn't able to "promote" the complementary transmitter, but there were not any (seriously) peculiar requirements for it, so I bought a Motorola FMR series transmitter (old time mobile radio guys will recognize it as a "turkey oven" style) from a guy in Steubenville, Ohio (he bought a batch that were being surplused by the Atomic Energy Commission).
I designed and fabricated the special cabling harness needed to connect up this "odd couple", and installed in in the car.
I went through the necessary formalities with Ohio Bell (the engineering guy who did the technical "vetting" sat at the next desk from me, and I was from time to time loaned to his department), was assigned a number (I got a "roaming" number that was unique nation-wide, so I could use my station in other cities) and become a recognized system customer
My number was YJ5-4284. The "YJ" told what channel I received calls on, and "54284" was my address code (the way the electromechanical decoders worked, all the digits of any valid number added to 23).
One evening in late 1958 I was sitting in the car outside the home of one of my buddies, shooting the breeze. The MTS phone rang. It was a call from a young lady we knew, who had been engaged to one of my best friends. She was a beautiful 19-year old redhead with a stunning figure (see a pattern here?), of Hungarian-Polish ancestry, originally from Brooklyn, New York. She ran the office for a practice of three Jewish internists.
She had called to report that the engagement was off (quite a story in itself), that she was very sad, and wondered if I would come over to console her. Of course I did.
One thing led to another, and in June, 1960, we were married. We were married until her tragic death from a heart attack late in 1997.
So you can see why I never thought that a cellular wireless mobile telephone would come to be almost everybody's "telephone".
In any case, the first time, in 1997, Carla called me, it was from the "landline" phone at her office to the "landline" phone at my house.
Sometimes we progress, and sometimes we retrogress.
Well, that's enough autobiography for now.
Best regards,
Doug
