How can anyone forget Cannons "cell phone"?
At the time, ot was a mobile car phone, and you had to call the "mobile operator" to make a call.
From what I have heard, they did really have these car phones back in the day, but there was a huge box in the trunk with the equipmewnt for it.
Cannon seemed to have a regular Phone receiver with a dangling cord in the car to use as his "car phone".
In the 1950s TV series Superman,Perry White had a mobile phone in his car.He used it once when he broke free of kidnappers,to try to call for help.
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My uncle had a phone like that in car in the 70's. The box took up half the trunk of his Cadillac. It was great. It had a latch to hold the earpiece down and it was a rotary phone. Those were the days.
shareI remember seeing pictures in books of men in the army walking around with a big" pack" on their back that was attached to a phone. This device only had a range of about a mile and a half.
I was at the "Franklin Institute" in Philadelphia to see the giant walk through heart and in the lobby there was an exhibit of the evolving cell phone technology. Apparently the first major innovation came in 1947 when a device was invented to be used in police vehicles-I am assuming that the military had it too. But, knowing Frank Cannon he had it before that.
That might have been just a regular radio. The reason for the handset would be so that you could talk and listen simultaneously.
Sbzgfqmtx rules.
I don't know how old you are, but yes, they did have car phones, and yes you had to make calls through a mobile operator. Lots of TV detectives had them. As well as wealthy characters on TV shows. In real life, only wealthy people had them. And yes they were real.
shareFrom what I understand, these operated like marine telephones.
My dad had a sales rep down at work with a Buick Riviera that had a red phone in it. The other writers were correct, they took up an enormous amount of trunk space because, remember, they had transistors back then but no integrated chips and circuits. So you had alot of transistors, capacitors and resistors to make the thing work.
In "Sabrina" with Bogart, he had a car phone in his car, 1954. That was the earliest I have seen them shown or mentioned, but the service was available in the 1940s.
Here is a wiki article...I hate wiki most of the time, but this article seems fairly well done....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_radio_telephone
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i see you noticed that phone too, it looks rather old fashioned with the whole set and stuff, and it looked like a regular old phone. i mean that people had plugged in at home. but Kojak also made calls from the car, and he didn't have this huge setup. so why the diffrence? (or maybe he did have the same, but i think i would have thought of it in that case.)
that troll forrest,
staying in the old house right in the middle of it,
cats sneaking around,
elders know of hundred years old horror on this ground,
i hear evil,
i see evil,
you tell me old secrets, your folks passed down, sounds so harsh, i looked in your dekko eyes,
i feel comfortable around women, i don't scare by tales you tell me tonight,
two funny characters coming to my door, right from the neighbor,
small tiny guy, and a big fat and tall,
what could they want now.
fix the heat, the water, i'm not sure why.
i tried to escape, but the place didn't have doors.
tried so hard to block it with drawers.
i got murderered in my dream,
and at the intensity of the scene,
i woke up, but somehow my walls seem changed in tan,
and as i looked on the clock, it didn't have any hands.
Let me add Perry Mason to the list. There are quite a few episodes of both him and Paul Drake using car phones.
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You're right it's difficult to forget his cell phone, simply because he did NOT have one. This was 1973, he had a CAR phone rigged into it with wires. A cell phone by definition you hold in your hand.
shareA Cellular phone (Cell Phone) is by definition a mobile phone that uses a series of multiple towers located throughout an area that overlap and create 'cells' of coverage. As a cellular phone moves from one place to another it crosses into differnt cells and the calls are automatically switched from one cell to another. This allows for lower power transmitters but requires many more towers. Most of the original cell phones were actually mounted in cars. They would have a handset with a cradle that was connected to a box that had most of the 'works' plus power and antenna connections. The antenna's were unique in that most were about 12" high with a coiled section.
Cannon's phone, like many others on TV and in real life, was a mobile radio phone that used a more powerful signal. There were fewer towers but they also operated at a much higher power than cellular systems. Because there were fewer towers there wasn't as much bandwidth for the signal, which kept the service expensive and relatively rare. The phone, usually a Motorola, consisted of a head unit with the controls, dial and handset connected to a large radio box, usually in the trunk. It used a different type of antenna than today's cellular phones. Some systems would allow you to dial but many required the use of a mobile operator to place the call.
Early cellular phones not mounted in cars were available but were either car type units in a carrying case with a battery or the Motorola "brick" phone. These operated at a lower power (around 800mw if I remember right) verses the car mounted units at 3w. In the early days of cellular development fewer towers meant that the portable units were not as reliable.
With the roll out of digital cell service in the 90's the phones could be made even smaller and more signals could be carried by the system.
Starsky & Hutch have one in this clip...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPmmqH9RRBk (towards the end) in their borrowed pimp ride.
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I remember that you could pick up police radios and taxicabs between channels 5-6.
Throw in "Mannix" to the other Private Dick's that had phones. Also, I remember that "Banacek's" horn would start honking if he was out of the car to tell him that his phone was ringing.
A car phone was featured in one of the color episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show," circa 1967 -- a furniture polish salesman's car is damaged and he has Andy call the service station directly / via the "mobile operator." Another example of such a phone seen on TV.
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