Constant Touch Read Online Free PDF Page A

just around the corner.
    Indeed, heavy car-bound radio communications had been pioneered in the United States in the 1920s. And, unlike Ericsson’s experimental system, these were true mobile radios: there was no need to stop the car. Like the fictional Dick Tracy, the first users were trying to stop crime. With the production of fast cars and good smooth roads, criminals were getting harder to catch. The result was an arms race between organised crime and the police, each in turn adopting faster cars, more fearsome weapons and, to coordinate action, speedier communication. The Detroit police department was first to try the experiment in 1921. The patrolman, alerted by a message, would have to stop the car and call in by wire. But in 1928, a fully voice-based mobile radio system was introduced in Detroit. Other forces followed.
    During the Second World War, radio manufacturers, having cut their teeth on police radio, turned to consider military applications. One such company had been started by Paul V. Galvin in Chicago in 1928. But the name of the company, Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, was soon superseded by that of its chief product, ‘Motorola’ radios, a tag that evokes perfectly the intimate historical relationship between car and mobile radio. One-way Motorola police radios were installed in the 1930s, and the first two-way radio wasprovided to the police of Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1940. By then Motorola was gearing up for wartime production. The ‘Handie-Talkie’ two-way radio was developed for the US Army Signal Corps that year, followed two years later by the ‘Walkie-Talkie’. This backpack radio, designed by Daniel E. Noble, worked by frequency rather than amplitude modulation, thereby reducing weight and size while improving performance. Motorola’s 35-pound Walkie-Talkie made mobile radio communication practical in the jungles of west Pacific islands or the farmland of Normandy.
    All these American systems were mobile radios but not mobile telephones: you couldn’t use a Walkie-Talkie to speak to someone in a call-box. Part of the reason lay in wartime priorities. The telephone network and radio remained separate until 1945, when the war’s end meant that military production dropped off and new commercial projects could be given the green light. But the separation was also enforced by regulation. The Federal Communications Commission had to be persuaded to drop its opposition before mobile radio telephones could be launched. Nevertheless the FCC granted a licence to AT&T and Southwestern Bell to operate the first basic commercial system, called Mobile Telephone Service, in St Louis, Missouri, beginning in 1946. Soon it spread to 24 other cities.
    Demand for car telephones was intense. AT&T launched its ‘highway service’ between New York andBoston in 1947, but in New York itself there were severe problems. Not only was there a waiting list of 2,000 potential customers, but 730 lucky users competed to speak on just twelve radio channels. For two decades radio telephony could barely squeeze onto the radio spectrum. Ironically, the congestion was partly caused by the spectacular growth of private radio. ‘“Mobiling” has become one of the leading activities in ham radio,’ wrote Charles Caringella, call-sign W6NJV, introducing his
Amateur Radio Mobile Handbook
in 1965. ‘This growth is only natural; more time is being spent in the automobile than ever before – commuting to and from work, as well as weekend and vacation trips.’
    There was not enough room on the radio spectrum for private radio and mobile telephony. But in Ring’s concept of the cellular phone, there existed a way out: by reusing radio frequencies in repeating cells, spectrum space could be saved, and more users fitted in. AT&T lobbied the FCC, without success, for a decade from 1958 to 1968. Then, at the same time as the civil rights and counter-cultural