1965 mobile phone on "Get Smart" [telecom]
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Posted by on September 3, 2008, 5:38 pm
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We've previously talked about the phones used on the 1960s spy-spoof TV show "Get Smart". The show is now available on DVD and I treated myself to a copy. In a 1965 episode, Max uses a car's cigarette lighter to make a phone call. He then uses the car's mobile phone to light his cigarette. I took a minute to look at the mobile phone unit. It did not have a dial, but appeared to be capable of having one. It had a Bell System logo in the center. Was this the advanced mobile system in use until cell phones came out? There were two rows of buttons, one row had 11 eleven gray buttons (couldn't make out the labels). the other row had four buttons of different colors. Were the 11 buttons various channels the caller could choose from to make his call? A friend of mine worked as a driver for a big shot in the 1970s, the car had a mobile phone in it. My friend said it was used just like a regular phone--to call him I would dial the regular seven digit number, and he would dial out. Did users have dial tones or have to press Send as we do today? We had to keep calls short as it was expensive. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Steven Lichter on September 4, 2008, 3:55 am
Please log in for more thread options hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:  later when dials were added the were IMTS phone. The IMTS you could dial out like a regular phone and had dial tone. The olde MTS units you reached an operator. One of the GTE vehicles that I drove had one and it was very interesting since phone were very rare; just doctors and attorneys had them, maybe a few movie stars. -- The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2008 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Ron Kritzman on September 4, 2008, 5:58 pm
Please log in for more thread options Steven Lichter wrote: I had one! People would ask "How the hell does a kid in his 20s rate a phone in his car?" The real answer? I worked for an RCC. :-) -- remove the letters in caps to reply | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Dave Garland on September 4, 2008, 11:40 pm
Please log in for more thread options It was a dark and stormy night when Steven Lichter And, during the winter of '70, my biker landlord, who had a starter generator in the back of his pickup and used the phone to take orders for his car-starting business (which was quite brisk in the early hours of a -20F workday Minnesota morning). On busy days I'd take calls in his kitchen and batch them and relay the jobs to him, on slower days he'd just take calls in the cab. I don't remember what caused calls to go one place or the other, I don't think call forwarding was available in those days. It may have been he advertised both numbers, and just didn't answer the car phone when I was dispatching. As soon as weather turned warmer and the car phone no longer paid for itself, he had it removed. Dave | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Steven Lichter on September 5, 2008, 12:29 am
Please log in for more thread options Dave Garland wrote: I was talking to a friend who I worked with before I retired from GTE, he is still there with Verizon; I was talking to him about the posts I had seen about MTS phone and I remembered that the company had activated its IMTS towers and transmitters in Hemet, Calif in the late 90's because the cell phones that we used in company vehicles had major dead spots, he told me that they just removed them last year after a bunch of micro sites had been installed in the mountains around there. He said that the 4 phones are in boxes in the CO. I asked him to see if he could get his hands on them, might be nice to have in my collection of telephone gear. -- The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2008 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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> TV show "Get Smart".
>
> The show is now available on DVD and I treated myself to a copy.
>
> In a 1965 episode, Max uses a car's cigarette lighter to make a phone
> call. He then uses the car's mobile phone to light his cigarette.
>
> I took a minute to look at the mobile phone unit. It did not have a
> dial, but appeared to be capable of having one. It had a Bell System
> logo in the center.
>
> Was this the advanced mobile system in use until cell phones came out?
>
> There were two rows of buttons, one row had 11 eleven gray buttons
> (couldn't make out the labels). the other row had four buttons of
> different colors.
>
> Were the 11 buttons various channels the caller could choose from to
> make his call?
>
>
> A friend of mine worked as a driver for a big shot in the 1970s, the
> car had a mobile phone in it. My friend said it was used just like a
> regular phone--to call him I would dial the regular seven digit
> number, and he would dial out. Did users have dial tones or have to
> press Send as we do today? We had to keep calls short as it was
> expensive.
>