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Speaker 1: With technology with tech Stuff from works dot com. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works. If you

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Speaker 1: think my voice sounds a little odd, I'm coming down

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Speaker 1: with a cold. But as I record this, this is

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Speaker 1: the last episode of tech Stuff. I'm recording in the

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Speaker 1: year seventeen, although you are hearing it in the year eighteen,

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Speaker 1: So you're listening to me from the past, unless you're

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Speaker 1: in the chat room at twitch dot tv slash slash

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff, in which case you're actually watching me record

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Speaker 1: it right now, So you're hearing a episode seventeen, in

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Speaker 1: which case, uh, we traveled to the future. That's how

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Speaker 1: time works. And speaking of time, you know, I've I've

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Speaker 1: covered some cutting edge technologies recently and talked about blockchain,

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Speaker 1: which will be an episode coming up soon. That's all

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Speaker 1: about the technology of the future. Well, I want to

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Speaker 1: talk about the technology of the past today and talk

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Speaker 1: about pagers or beepers. Uh, something that's classic, right, the

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Speaker 1: humble pager. The beeper This is the device that gives

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Speaker 1: you an alert to an incoming message, so as you

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Speaker 1: can dash out of a theater in dramatic fashion to

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Speaker 1: make an important phone call on a pay phone outside.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there used to be pay phones too. So

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Speaker 1: where did pagers come from and how do they work?

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Speaker 1: So that's our focus of our show today. So to start,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take a trip all the way back to

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, which was a tumultuous year. Socialism and

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Speaker 1: communism were sweeping Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Russia

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Speaker 1: was expanding its borders and invading various nations to claim

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Speaker 1: them for its own. Northern Ireland got its own parliament

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Speaker 1: in nine. Adolf Hitler would become the fearer of the

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Speaker 1: Nazi Party in nineteen twenty one, and the first White

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Speaker 1: Castle Hamburger joint opened in Wichita, Kansas in nineteen twenty one,

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Speaker 1: spelling doom for us all. But also in that year,

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Speaker 1: the Detroit Police Force implemented what is generally agreed upon

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Speaker 1: as the precursor to pagers, and that system was actually

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Speaker 1: a one way radio communication system, which when you boil

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Speaker 1: a pager down, that's what your typical pager is. By

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Speaker 1: the way, don't boil down pagers, it will ruin them.

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Speaker 1: But a pager ultimately is a receiver that's at one

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Speaker 1: end of a radio communications system. Let's get back to

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Speaker 1: those Detroit police. So it's the nineteen twenties and the

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Speaker 1: United States was dealing with some pretty serious crime. This

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Speaker 1: was an era of bank robberies and bootlegging. Prohibition, that's

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Speaker 1: the era that made alcohol illegal in the United States

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Speaker 1: began in nineteen twenty and it would remain in effect

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Speaker 1: until December nineteen thirty three. The constitutional amendment that outlawed

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Speaker 1: the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol in the United

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Speaker 1: States created enormous opportunity for criminals because people love their hooch,

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Speaker 1: and so it became incredibly profitable to smuggle alcohol. Gangsters

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Speaker 1: made a fortune off of bootlegging and other illegal activities,

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Speaker 1: and the police were largely unprepared to deal with this

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Speaker 1: problem in the major metropolitan areas. This was before two

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Speaker 1: way radios were small enough to fit into police cruisers,

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Speaker 1: and so there was no easy way to send out

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Speaker 1: a message among a police force to have them close

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Speaker 1: in on the bad guys. But three Detroit police officers,

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Speaker 1: Kenneth our Cox, Walter Vogler, and Bernard Fitzgerald, had an idea.

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Speaker 1: They experimented by putting radio sets in the back seats

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Speaker 1: of their model t Ford police patrol cars, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: it took up pretty much the whole seat. The radio

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Speaker 1: sets weren't special in any way, and though they could

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Speaker 1: pick up a signal, they weren't terribly consistent. They also

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Speaker 1: didn't operate on a special bandwidth, which meant police back

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Speaker 1: at HQ, but have to broadcast on a normal channel,

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Speaker 1: which could be picked up by anyone with a radio set.

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Speaker 1: So if you wanted to listen in on police radio,

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Speaker 1: which again was just a one way communication from headquarters

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Speaker 1: to a few cruisers that had radio sets, you could

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Speaker 1: do it. In fact, in order to operate, the Detroit

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Speaker 1: Police Force had to register their police radio station as

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Speaker 1: an entertainment station and they would play recorded music whenever

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Speaker 1: they weren't reading off lists of stolen vehicles or other

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Speaker 1: criminal information. And the call sign for this radio station

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Speaker 1: was ko P COP. Pretty cute, right, all that's true?

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Speaker 1: By nine Kenneth Cox, one of those three police officers,

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Speaker 1: and an engineering student named Robert L. Bats built a

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Speaker 1: radio set specifically for a vehicle. It was stable, it

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Speaker 1: had its own antenna, and the antenna could attached to

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Speaker 1: the car, and the Detroit Police Force began to install

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Speaker 1: those kinds of systems into cruisers for real. In n

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Speaker 1: the Detroit Police for became the first law enforcement agency

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Speaker 1: to dispatch police cars by radio. Other cities would soon

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Speaker 1: follow that lead, and it might be a good idea

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Speaker 1: to have a brief refresher on how radio communication works.

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Speaker 1: With one way communication, you're working with a transmitter and

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Speaker 1: a receiver. We'll look at both of these components. Will

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Speaker 1: start with the transmitter first, you need a power supply.

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Speaker 1: Next along the chain of components is a device called

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Speaker 1: an oscillator, which creates an alternating current at a particular frequency.

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Speaker 1: And typically you'd use the oscillator to create a sign wave.

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Speaker 1: This would serve as your basic radio signal, also known

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Speaker 1: as the carrier signal. But here's a problem. That signal

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Speaker 1: carries no information. You could send it out, but it

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Speaker 1: would just be blank. It would be nothing to send

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Speaker 1: information along such a signal. You have to modify the

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Speaker 1: signal in some way, and with radio as you do

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Speaker 1: this with a modulator. Modulators affect the sign waves sent

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Speaker 1: by radio signals in some fundamental way. There are two

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Speaker 1: main approaches to doing this. There's amplitude modulation or a

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Speaker 1: M That involves increasing or decreasing the amplitude or intensity

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Speaker 1: of the sign waves. So if you draw a sign

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Speaker 1: wave out going from left to right, the height of

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Speaker 1: the peaks and the depth of the troughs, that's your amplitude.

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Speaker 1: So if you make them taller and you make the

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Speaker 1: troughs deeper, you're increasing the amplitude of that wave. Then

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Speaker 1: there's frequency modulation or FM, which involves changing the frequency

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Speaker 1: of a radio wave. So that involves decreasing the wave

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Speaker 1: length now so that you have more of these waves

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Speaker 1: pass a given point within a second. That's your frequency.

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Speaker 1: So if you think again about this is a time function.

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Speaker 1: You've got this form of a wave. It passes through

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Speaker 1: a point. Let's say that it's fast enough where a

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Speaker 1: thousand of them pass a point a specific point in

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Speaker 1: space every second. That's a thousand hurts. That's one thousand

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Speaker 1: wavelengths per second. If you were to decrease that, you know,

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Speaker 1: decrease the length of the waves, they're still traveling at

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Speaker 1: the same speed, but now there's they're squished, right, you

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Speaker 1: get more waves in per second. Now it might be

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Speaker 1: five thousand or five thousand hurts. It's five thousand wavelengths

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Speaker 1: per second. So next you would typically have an amplifier

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Speaker 1: and that would take this signal and create an amplified

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Speaker 1: version of it, which then gets sent to an antenna,

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Speaker 1: a transmittle emitter antenna. The antenna essentially converts this electrical

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Speaker 1: signal into radio waves, which propagate out from the antenna

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Speaker 1: into the surrounding environment. The amplifier and antenna determine how

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Speaker 1: far the signal will carry, So when you hear about

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Speaker 1: transmitters and how powerful they are, you're really thinking about

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Speaker 1: what's the amplification. Uh And some radio broadcast towers have

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Speaker 1: much greater amplification than others, which is why you can

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Speaker 1: pick them up further away than the their their counterparts.

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Speaker 1: Now on the receiver side, you have a very similar

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Speaker 1: series of components. First, we'll start with the receiver's antenna.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna go from where the signal comes in and

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Speaker 1: work our way inward. So the antenna captures the radio waves,

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Speaker 1: or rather we could say the radio waves induce an

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Speaker 1: alternating current to flow through the antenna that goes to

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Speaker 1: an amplifier, which detects this electrical signal and boosts it

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Speaker 1: so that a detector can separate the relevant information from

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Speaker 1: the base carrier sign wave. In audio radios, you also

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Speaker 1: have a couple of other elements, like a tuner, because

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Speaker 1: there are lots of different frequencies you can broadcast at,

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Speaker 1: so a tuner allows you to tune into that band

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Speaker 1: of frequencies um and it ignores everything else, so that

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Speaker 1: way you can just concentrate on the radio station you

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Speaker 1: want to hear. Otherwise you would get all radio stations

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Speaker 1: all the time, and that would be annoying. You also

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Speaker 1: have an audio amplifier, typically in your regular sumer radio.

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Speaker 1: That I mean you have to otherwise you're not gonna

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Speaker 1: hear anything that boosts the signal, so it's strong enough

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Speaker 1: to make the speakers work. So essentially, what you're doing

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Speaker 1: is you're taking some information, you transform that information into

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Speaker 1: electrical signals. You use that to modify a carrier wave.

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Speaker 1: You amplify that wave and send it out over in

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Speaker 1: antenna to create radio signals. Those radio signals get picked

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Speaker 1: up by a receiver's antenna and essentially revert that receiver

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Speaker 1: reverses this process. Now, I mentioned that Detroit started using

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Speaker 1: this one way radio communication, which at the time depended

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Speaker 1: upon amplitude modulation radio signals am back in nine in

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Speaker 1: an official capacity, but a year earlier, a young boy

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Speaker 1: who would become incredibly important in the development of multiple

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Speaker 1: wireless technologies first became fascinated with radio. That boy's name

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Speaker 1: was al Gross. He was nine years old in nineteen seven,

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Speaker 1: and he was on a steamship traveling across the Great Lakes,

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Speaker 1: and he got to tour the ship and he got

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Speaker 1: up to the radio room and he thought it was

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Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating. He could hear the wireless being operated on there.

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Speaker 1: And the operator brought Al Gross into the room and

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Speaker 1: explained what the equipment was and and Gross was completely

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Speaker 1: blown away. Eleven years later, Al Gross develops a prototype

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Speaker 1: of a two way radio communications device, and Gross gave

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Speaker 1: the gadget an interesting name. He called it the Walkey Talkie.

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Speaker 1: His invention brought him to the attention of the United

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Speaker 1: States Office of Strategic Services, which would eventually evolve into

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Speaker 1: the Central Intelligence Agency, and Gross was recruited to develop

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Speaker 1: this technology for military use, specifically creating a way for

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Speaker 1: covert communication between aircraft and troops while the troops were

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Speaker 1: behind enemy lines during World War Two. After the war,

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Speaker 1: Gross built his own business called Gross Electronics Incorporated and

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Speaker 1: filed a dozen patents relating to wireless communication, a lot

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Speaker 1: of which would end up being really important over the

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Speaker 1: following decades, including one that described the circuitry needed for

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Speaker 1: a personal paging system. And this would be in nineteen nine.

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Speaker 1: A year earlier, by the way, he had actually pioneered

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Speaker 1: citizens band radio or CB radio, So you radio fans

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Speaker 1: out there should really raise a glass to Mr Al Gross. Now.

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Speaker 1: Gross's breakthrough in nineteen nine was adapting his walkie talkie

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Speaker 1: technology for cordless remote telephonic signaling, and essentially his system

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Speaker 1: used radios to alert doctors for specific messages. Hospitals have

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Speaker 1: been relying on intercom systems with speakers wired up throughout

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Speaker 1: the building. You might be familiar with the classic line

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Speaker 1: paging Dr Howard, Dr Fine, Dr Howard. If you are

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Speaker 1: be sure to shout out to me what that's from,

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Speaker 1: because I'm always happy to meet another cultured individual. The

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Speaker 1: intercom system was a bit intrusive, and it meant that

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Speaker 1: doctors frequently had to listen for messages that they really

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Speaker 1: didn't need to worry about because it wasn't for them.

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Speaker 1: Gross's solution was these pages. The they weren't called pagers yet.

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Speaker 1: The gadgets had what M i T calls discriminating circuitry,

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Speaker 1: which just means the circuits could detect a specific signal

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Speaker 1: so that the owner of the pager would only get

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Speaker 1: alerts intended for that person. And that's an important distinction.

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Speaker 1: A commercial radio is just a dumb receiver, so you

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Speaker 1: can tune it to a specific band of frequencies, but

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Speaker 1: you're getting the same signal as everyone else that's also

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Speaker 1: tuned to that band. If you want to send a

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Speaker 1: message to a specific person, you need to have some

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Speaker 1: way to indicate to that person's radio device that there's

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Speaker 1: a personal message for them and have that device ignore

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Speaker 1: anything that wasn't intended for its owner. So how does

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Speaker 1: it do that? Well, we'll cover it in just a second,

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Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So how do you make sure a pager knows which

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Speaker 1: signal is meant or hit? Well. One way to do

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Speaker 1: that is to create a system in which every pager

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Speaker 1: unit within a service has a specific set of audio

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Speaker 1: tones associated with it. Early pages used a two tone system.

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Speaker 1: Typically you describe them as an A tone and a

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Speaker 1: B tone. And these tones would be anywhere from three

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Speaker 1: hurts to three thousand hurts, and frequency which is within

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Speaker 1: the range of human hearing, which averages out to hurt hurts,

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Speaker 1: although you start to lose those higher ranges as you

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Speaker 1: get older. The two tones would also last a specific

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Speaker 1: amount of time each, and the combination of the tone's

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Speaker 1: frequency and duration would be enough to create unique call

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Speaker 1: signs for each pager. The approach did have some limitations, however, Namely,

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Speaker 1: it limited how many pages could be connected to a

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Speaker 1: single system. Early pages topped out at fewer than a

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Speaker 1: thousand units per systems, somewhere in the realm of eight

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty or so, which works fine. If the

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Speaker 1: pages are meant for a specific place like a hospital

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Speaker 1: or even a restaurant, you're never going to need more

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Speaker 1: than that. But if you wanted a general consumer pager,

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Speaker 1: that was not going to cut it. You max out

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Speaker 1: your customer base if fewer than one thousand, and if

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Speaker 1: you wanted to grow, you'd have to implement news systems

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Speaker 1: and administer them all at the same time using different

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Speaker 1: radio frequencies. It would just become a nightmare. Later, pager

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Speaker 1: manufacturers would switch to a five six tone system, which

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Speaker 1: meant that the identification code would consist of either five

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Speaker 1: or six audio tones that increase the potential number of

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Speaker 1: pages on the single system dramatically to more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand up to a million. As for the messages,

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Speaker 1: those also varied. The early pagers were really just one

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Speaker 1: way radios, similar to what Detroit had been using decades earlier.

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Speaker 1: Al Gross's invention was meant for doctors to wear in

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Speaker 1: their clothing. An operator would work a central switchboard and

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Speaker 1: when a request would come in for a specific doctor,

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Speaker 1: the operator would activate the circuit for that doctors specific

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Speaker 1: pager frequency. Though it's send a signal that the doctor's

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Speaker 1: pager would pick up, and the pager would make some

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Speaker 1: sort of audible alert also known as a noise to

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Speaker 1: let the doctor know, Hey, you need to listen to me.

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Speaker 1: The doctor would hold up the pag or to their

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Speaker 1: ear and listen as a voice clear as a day,

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Speaker 1: if a day were you know, a little fuzzy, with

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Speaker 1: some feedback, and it would say something like dr fine,

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Speaker 1: please report to the ICU. The technology didn't really catch

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Speaker 1: on outside of a few narrow uses. The Jewish Hospital

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Speaker 1: in New York City saw the value, but according to

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Speaker 1: al Gross, he encountered a lot of reluctance among other

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Speaker 1: doctors who seemed to hate the idea, and they didn't

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Speaker 1: really care for the fact that someone could get ahold

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Speaker 1: of them at any time, like when they're playing golf,

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Speaker 1: for example. That was al Gross's joke, by the way,

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Speaker 1: not mine. And so while his idea was demonstrably useful,

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Speaker 1: it was still ahead of its time, and he he

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Speaker 1: couldn't get any of the big electronics companies really interested

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Speaker 1: in it at first either. But in ninety a company

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Speaker 1: called to L answer Phone. Yeah, that's a fun one

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Speaker 1: to read off and then say, wait, how do I

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Speaker 1: say this out loud? To L answer Phone operate a

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Speaker 1: paging service for doctors in New York. It was not automated,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking. The way the paging service worked was that

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Speaker 1: you would call a number. Let's say it's a patient

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Speaker 1: and a doctor, because it was almost exclusively used by doctors.

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Speaker 1: A patient calls a doctor's number, the doctor fails to

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Speaker 1: pick up the phone. The call, after a certain number

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Speaker 1: of rings, relays to a messaging service where a human

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Speaker 1: being listens to the message takes it down for the doctor.

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Speaker 1: If the call is urgent. The messaging service then makes

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Speaker 1: a note that this needs to be broadcast to the

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Speaker 1: doctor's pager using a three digit code number unique to

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Speaker 1: that doctor. Once an hour, the doctor is expected to

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Speaker 1: turn on their receiver and listen into a series of

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Speaker 1: three digit codes. If the doctor's own code is among them,

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Speaker 1: the doctor is to call into the messaging service to

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Speaker 1: find out what's going on, and once the doctor checks in,

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Speaker 1: the messaging service removes the doctor's code from the broadcast.

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Speaker 1: So this pager did not alert you when you got

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Speaker 1: a new message. Instead, you actually had to turn it

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Speaker 1: on actively and listen in to find out if you

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Speaker 1: had any messages. The codes themselves were recorded on sixteen

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Speaker 1: millimeter film, and that film was then encased in plastic

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00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:09,080
Speaker 1: sticks which could be hung on a looped belt of

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Speaker 1: a transmitting machine. So this belt would just rotate through

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Speaker 1: and these little plastic sticks with film in them would

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Speaker 1: get scanned by a reader and that would pick up

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Speaker 1: what the code was for that particular piece of film.

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Speaker 1: It would then broadcast that information out uh in its

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Speaker 1: actual broadcast. That broadcast gets repeated every single minute for

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Speaker 1: an hour. After a doctor called in, you would just

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Speaker 1: remove that doctor's stick from the belt and it would

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Speaker 1: then remove that three digit number from the broadcast, which

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Speaker 1: seems pretty wild to me. It's kind of an interesting concept.

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Speaker 1: Doctors would actually pay to be included on this service.

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Speaker 1: It cost about twelve dollars a month back in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and the range on the broadcast tower was

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Speaker 1: twenty five miles twenty five mile radius around the tower.

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Speaker 1: Oh and we still weren't calling them pagers, even though

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Speaker 1: they worked on what was referred to as a paging service.

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Speaker 1: So they called the service a paging one. But the

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Speaker 1: devices we're still just kind of radios. They weren't called pagers.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't until a decade after Gross's attempts, so we're

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Speaker 1: talking nineteen fifty nine, that we finally get the word pager.

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Speaker 1: That word was coined by a little company called Motorola.

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Speaker 1: The original Motorola pager was a personal radio communications device.

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Speaker 1: It could transmit radio messages to pager owners. This one

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Speaker 1: got a bit more traction than Gross's approach. Also, by

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Speaker 1: this time, some of the patents Gross had filed were expiring.

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Speaker 1: Now that's what happens with patents. When you file a patent,

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Speaker 1: you have exclusive rights to that particular implementation of ideas

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Speaker 1: for the duration of the patent. In return, you submit

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Speaker 1: documentation describing those ideas, and that documentation is publicly available

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Speaker 1: through the patent office. So if anyone wants to use

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Speaker 1: your implementation, they can see how you did it, more

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Speaker 1: or less, but they're supposed to come to you and

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Speaker 1: negotiate a license or otherwise purchased the Latin or they

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Speaker 1: can just bide their time and wait until the patent

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Speaker 1: has expired, and then they can use that same implementation,

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Speaker 1: because at that point it's a fair game, which is

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Speaker 1: more or less what Motorola was able to do, and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily malicious. Gross's ideas were great, but the

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Speaker 1: world just wasn't really ready for it yet, and the

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Speaker 1: technology Gross used was a bit bulkier than the tech

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Speaker 1: available a decade later. Motorola's approach, well very similar to Grosses,

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Speaker 1: was more practical by ninety nine. Even so, the pagers

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Speaker 1: Motorola offered weren't exactly like the ones we'd see later on,

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Speaker 1: it did evolve over time. In nineteen sixty an inventor

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Speaker 1: named John Francis Mitchell developed the first pager of this style,

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Speaker 1: to use transistors. See earlier pages were actually using vacuum tubes,

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Speaker 1: which made the pages larger, heavier, and it meant they

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Speaker 1: could heat up if they were used a lot, although

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Speaker 1: the nature of pages meant that that rarely ever happened.

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Speaker 1: Mitchell was able to make a pager using transistors instead

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Speaker 1: of vacuum tubes, and he was a chief engineer a

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Speaker 1: motor Ela and would eventually rise to the rank of

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Speaker 1: president and CEO of the company. He'd also play an

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00:20:05,680 --> 00:20:09,080
Speaker 1: instrumental part in developing the technology that made cell phones possible.

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Speaker 1: Bell System the Telephone company offered a paging service as

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Speaker 1: early as nineteen sixty two using a gadget they called

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Speaker 1: the bell Boy, which is just so adorable. It contained

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Speaker 1: three receivers. Each receiver was tuned to a different frequency,

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Speaker 1: so the pager would only activate if all three receivers

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Speaker 1: picked up a signal simultaneously. You had to send three

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Speaker 1: signals of those three frequencies for the pager to react.

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Speaker 1: This would also cause the Bellboy to make a noise,

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Speaker 1: which would alert the owner to a call that they

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Speaker 1: needed to call into a central messaging service in order

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Speaker 1: to get their relevant message. So again, I didn't tell

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Speaker 1: you what the message was, but rather that you had

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Speaker 1: received a message and you needed to call into your

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Speaker 1: answering service to find out what that was. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty four, Motorola introduced the page boy. Now, originally this

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Speaker 1: was a tone pager, which meant it would only send

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Speaker 1: a tone to the targeted device, and the tone would

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Speaker 1: indicate whatever your specific course of action should be, such

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Speaker 1: as call the home office or get your took us

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Speaker 1: to the emergency room as soon as possible. Within a

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Speaker 1: couple of years, Motorola began offering tone and voice page boys,

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Speaker 1: which could play either a tone or an actual voice message. Now,

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Speaker 1: clearly voice messages can relay more information than just when

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Speaker 1: you hear this noise, do this thing. But in any case,

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Speaker 1: these technologies all involved broadcasting a message out into the environment.

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Speaker 1: And when the Motoroles moved to make Pages a consumer product,

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Speaker 1: the man explained to customers, Okay, this product works, but

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Speaker 1: only if you live with an X number of miles

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Speaker 1: of this broadcast tower, because the alternative meant broadcasting the

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Speaker 1: same message across numerous towers, because you never know where

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Speaker 1: you're intended recipient might be. The pages in those days

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00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:54,520
Speaker 1: were all one way receivers, so again they gave no

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Speaker 1: information back to their system. There was no nationwide paging

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Speaker 1: system set up yet, so they're all local area, one

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00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:06,080
Speaker 1: way communication devices. Now, this makes it a great time

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00:22:06,119 --> 00:22:09,040
Speaker 1: to address a cliche about pagers that was prevalent in

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Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties and up to today really, and

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00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:14,399
Speaker 1: that was that the only people who carried pages around

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Speaker 1: were doctors and drug dealers. Why drug dealers because they

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Speaker 1: could get a message from someone who wanted to buy drugs,

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00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:23,760
Speaker 1: but the drug dealer would never be tracked because pages

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Speaker 1: are just dumb receivers. They couldn't reveal information about the

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Speaker 1: drug dealers whereabouts. I gave the dealer the ability to

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00:22:30,119 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 1: receive messages, decide which ones to respond to, and keep

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Speaker 1: everything below the radar. But these messages also for the

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00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: most part, were unencrypted, which meant was possible to intercept

396
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 1: these messages and hear them unencrypted and understand exactly what

397
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:48,399
Speaker 1: was being sent to them. So you also had to

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00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:51,679
Speaker 1: be sneaky about you know what the messages content actually was.

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00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,359
Speaker 1: Now I also need to point out that eventually there

400
00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:58,240
Speaker 1: would be two way pagers on the market, and those

401
00:22:58,240 --> 00:23:01,440
Speaker 1: products allow for communication to flow in both directions from

402
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 1: the system to the pager and vice versa. Now, under

403
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 1: that kind of system, you definitely could track a person's

404
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: general location, at least based off which receiving tower was

405
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 1: picking up the pagers responses. But that was different and

406
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:16,200
Speaker 1: those wouldn't come into play until the mid nineteen nineties.

407
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Speaker 1: Now I've got a lot more to talk about with pagers.

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00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: We've got some stuff to chat about as far as

409
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Speaker 1: protocols go and the different numeric and alpha numeric approaches

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Speaker 1: to paging. But before I jump into that next section,

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Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well.

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Speaker 1: Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, and by nineteen eighty,

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Speaker 1: we're looking at about three point two million pagers deployed

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Speaker 1: out in the real world. That's globally, and these were

415
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:53,119
Speaker 1: all limited range pagers, meaning you still had to be

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00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 1: within the broadcast range of a specific service to get

417
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:59,119
Speaker 1: your notifications. Now, if that service went across a couple

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00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: of cities, you might be able to get your notification

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00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: if you went from one city to the other, but

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00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 1: most cases it meant that you really couldn't travel very

421
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: far away and still get notified. So outside of the

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00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:15,600
Speaker 1: effective range of the broadcast tower. The pages just a

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00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 1: hunk of circuits and plastic. It was only when wide

424
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:22,359
Speaker 1: aid area paging came about, which allowed messages to be

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00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: broadcast via radio across large areas, probably getting from city

426
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:27,960
Speaker 1: to city and even across countries, that they became a

427
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:32,639
Speaker 1: big consumer product that they began to Once they started

428
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: creating these wide area networks using very high frequencies instead

429
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 1: of lower frequencies in order to send these signals out,

430
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: those would travel much further, which means you don't need

431
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 1: as many towers to have your message go out across

432
00:24:47,119 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: a wide area. Um. They also tend to travel better

433
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: through buildings, which cell phone service doesn't necessarily do that. Um.

434
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: When I talk about who's using pages today, we'll chat

435
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that. So around the same

436
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 1: time in the early engineers created the protocols that would

437
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:09,360
Speaker 1: allow paging systems to transmit numeric data to pagers, which

438
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:14,200
Speaker 1: meant pages needed something new. They needed a display, because

439
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 1: before it was just a radio, right or just something

440
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: that made noise. In some cases it would just beap.

441
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: In fact, that's why we call them beepers. The original

442
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,679
Speaker 1: page boy had this very uh distinct beeping sound, and

443
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: people started calling them beepers. Using low power and LCD screens,

444
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: you could give them an actual display and the pages

445
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: could show a sequence of numbers. Those numbers could be

446
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 1: a phone number, so you could get a message saying

447
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:39,919
Speaker 1: that just gives you a phone number that you're supposed

448
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: to call, or it may be a series of digits

449
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: that represent a specific action. So for example, one to

450
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: three might mean call headquarters to receive a message, or

451
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,399
Speaker 1: you might have another code that tells you this is

452
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: an emergency code. You need to get back to the hospital.

453
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: There's a surgery that's waiting for you, that kind of thing.

454
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,959
Speaker 1: So there's another feature that doctors relied upon because it's

455
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,720
Speaker 1: sped up communication considerably and gave clear instructions regarding where

456
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: a doctor should go went on call. This is also

457
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: the time that paging systems began to create interfaces that

458
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,199
Speaker 1: allowed you to page someone by placing a call to

459
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: a page number. Using the telephone system. Before that, you

460
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 1: would have to just call a service, or you would

461
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: have to wait till US answering service answered your call

462
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,400
Speaker 1: before and they would send the message onto the paging system. Now,

463
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 1: the paging systems were starting to get integrated directly into

464
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: the telephone system, so you could have an interface from

465
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 1: your phone to the paging system. A few years later,

466
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: when we get into the mid nineteen eighties, new protocols

467
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,320
Speaker 1: and displays allowed for alpha numeric messages. Now you can

468
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: actually send words to someone, not just a series of numbers. Now.

469
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,120
Speaker 1: This necessitated the development of some protocols required to transmit

470
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 1: data to pager systems, and there are a few of them.

471
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: In Europe, the dominant protocol was called poc SAG poc

472
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:00,439
Speaker 1: s a G now that was an acronym that stood

473
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: for Post Office Code Standardization Advisory Group. In the United States,

474
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: the dominant protocol was once again from Motorola and it

475
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: was called FLEX. These were the sets of rules that

476
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 1: made it possible to administer a large system of one

477
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:19,360
Speaker 1: way radio receivers. Poc SAG and FLEX worked in slightly

478
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: different ways. With poc SAG, a system would send out

479
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 1: two messages to relay information to a specific pager. The

480
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: first message was a wake up message, and that would

481
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 1: bring pages out of a sleep mode. The wake up

482
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 1: message says I've got a broadcast coming, so you better

483
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: be ready, and the pages would switch from sleep mode

484
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 1: to active. The sleep mode helped conserve battery life. After

485
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 1: waking up, the pager would wait for a second message

486
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 1: that would contain data meant not just for that single pager,

487
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 1: and the data arrived in blocks called frames, so the

488
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: pager would seek out the information within those frames that

489
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: pertained specifically to the pager itself and extract that information

490
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: from the entire frame and give it to user. Flex,

491
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: on the other hand, relied on pagers scanning for unretreated

492
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 1: messages at predetermined intervals. So, in other words, a FLEX

493
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 1: pager would follow an instruction such as every fifteen minutes

494
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:16,640
Speaker 1: checked for unretrieved messages by doing a scan on the antenna.

495
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 1: Motorola's logic for the following this approach was two fold.

496
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: It kept air waves less cluttered, and it would also

497
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 1: help conserve battery life in the long run. Later, Motorola

498
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: would introduce a new protocol called Reflex, which wasn't just

499
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: a great Duran Durant song and pagers. Reflex was a

500
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: protocol that allowed for two way paging systems, meaning you

501
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: could use your pager to reply to messages. This turned

502
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: pagers into effectively text messengers. Sort of a precursor to

503
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: sell and smartphones. One of the earliest two way consumer

504
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: pagers was the Tango, once again created by Motorola. It

505
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 1: could receive text messages and short emails, but your responses

506
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 1: were limited to a few sta entered options. You only

507
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: had like four buttons to use, so you couldn't type

508
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: in stuff, but you could select from some standard responses

509
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: if you weren't next to a phone and couldn't call

510
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 1: the person immediately. This particular device hit the market in

511
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, and in Research in Motion a

512
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:23,719
Speaker 1: k A Rim a k a. BlackBerry created a device

513
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: called the inter at Active. Pager's interactive with the AT

514
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: symbol right in the middle there, and it's sported its

515
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: own full Quarty keyboard and let you respond to messages

516
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: with your own customized responses. Another protocol developed around this

517
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: time was the Telelocator Alpha Numeric Protocol or TAP, which

518
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: was originally known as the Motorola Page Entry or PET protocol.

519
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: This one created an industry standard for sending alpha numeric

520
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: messages to pagers. It lets you send an alpha numeric

521
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 1: message to a pager service, which then would forward that

522
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: message onto pagers themselves and later to mobile phones. Now

523
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: these days, pages rely on very high frequency transmissions, like

524
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: I said, which can go great distances, so that cuts

525
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: down those transmitters. So if you're going to be in

526
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: a horror movie, and I don't mean go to a

527
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: horror movie, I mean if you're going to be in

528
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: a horror movie, make sure you have a pager with you,

529
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: because chances are something's gonna happen that makes your cell

530
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: phone not work, But pagers might still work because those

531
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: signals travel further, and often you can end up getting

532
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: a page even if a cell phone signal can't get through.

533
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: This is the reason why certain people still carry pages,

534
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: because they're more reliable in those kind of situations. So

535
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: you could get a very valuable piece of information while

536
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: you're in that horror movie, something like don't go in

537
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: that door, and then you don't go in that door

538
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: and you and you get to be one of the

539
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: ones that lives. There is a downside though, one way pagers,

540
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: like I said, they don't send any information back to

541
00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 1: the system, which means you never know if your message

542
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 1: actually got to the pager you were sending it to

543
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: unless someone calls and responds to it. So if I

544
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: send out a message to your pager, I don't get

545
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: a notification if it got to you or not, because

546
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: it's a one way communication. The radio wave goes out,

547
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: but it doesn't come back. So unless you call me,

548
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure that you got the message.

549
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: My only real recourse is to send the page again

550
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: and again. And in fact, this was often a piece

551
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: of information people who owned pagers would tell people. They said, listen,

552
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: if you page me and you don't hear from me

553
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: within like a minute, go ahead and page me again,

554
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 1: because chances are I might have been in a spot

555
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: where I was just outside of range, or maybe I

556
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: had turned off my pager for a second. But if

557
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: I haven't called you back within a minute, go ahead

558
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: and try again, and do it again and again and again. Ah,

559
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 1: which could get really irritating of a lee if you

560
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: just don't want to answer a page, But it was

561
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: also necessary because there was no way to be sure

562
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: that your message was getting through. So go ahead and

563
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: be obnoxious, is what I'm saying now. Over time, the

564
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: consumer pager space began to diminish, which is not a

565
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 1: big shock because cell phones largely made most use cases

566
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: for pagers moot, at least for your average person. By

567
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: two thousand one, Motorola was actually getting out of the game.

568
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 1: They had been the dominant player in paging services since

569
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Eventually, a new company called us A Mobility,

570
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: formed out of a merger between two other companies, Metro

571
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: Call Holdings and Arch Wireless. Us A Mobility began to

572
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: take over the paging landscape in the United States, eventually

573
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:49,240
Speaker 1: merging with another company called am Com Software and then

574
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: transforming into a new entity called Spock s p o K.

575
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: Spot continues to create pages, including models that allow for

576
00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: encrypted paging services, which is a pretty big shift from

577
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 1: earlier technologies which were unencrypted and thus a potential liability.

578
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 1: You may have even heard about that that you don't

579
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: send that that sensitive information via paging because of that,

580
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: And while you don't see them out and about nearly

581
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,880
Speaker 1: as much these days, lots of people still use pagers.

582
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: Doctors and first responders often have them, as they are

583
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: reliable and they're efficient for specific types of data relays.

584
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: But it's pretty clear that the SMS protocols cell phones

585
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: smartphones have largely replaced much of our pager needs. Unless

586
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: we're in these narrow use cases, unless you're waiting at

587
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: a restaurant, many of those still use simple pages to

588
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: alert people when the table is ready. You get that

589
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: little coaster that lights up as a paging system. So

590
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: these days I find more and more people are using

591
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: phone numbers to send text messages or even a quick

592
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: phone call to alert people to a ready table. So

593
00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 1: even this is a fading use, I would say, of

594
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: the paging system. Oh and by the way, if you

595
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: want to know how some of these pages actually vibrate

596
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: or self ohones or smartphones or game controllers, the answer

597
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: is actually pretty simple. Inside the device, you have a

598
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: direct current motor and it has a spindle that it

599
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: can turn. The spindle rotates that are pretty high speed,

600
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 1: but attached to the spindle is an off center weight,

601
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: so the spindle has always weighted heavier to one side

602
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 1: versus the other. So as it spends, that weight creates

603
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: the vibration as the momentum shifts inside the device at

604
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: high speeds. Just like you should know. And that is

605
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,479
Speaker 1: generally speaking, hell pagers work and how they evolved over time.

606
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: It's an interesting story to kind of look back on.

607
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: It's Also, I think interesting to note that out Gross

608
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: never really became rich off his ideas. His ideas would

609
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: be the foundation not just for pagers, but also for

610
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: cell phone at technologies and other wireless technologies, but he

611
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,240
Speaker 1: wasn't really able to capitalize on them while the patents

612
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 1: were still in effect. It was only after the patents

613
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: had expired the Motorola kind of stepped in and started

614
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,880
Speaker 1: doing all of that work. However, al Gross never got

615
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:07,320
Speaker 1: angry or bitter about this. He was genuinely happy to

616
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: see the technology come to pass, and he said that

617
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: if in the end of the day he had made

618
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 1: a positive impact through his ideas, that was what was

619
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 1: important to him, which I think is pretty cool. He

620
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: passed away a few years ago, actually at the two

621
00:35:21,520 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 1: thousand one, I believe, so, uh, just taking a moment

622
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the brilliance of an inventor, someone who was

623
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 1: really eager to make a positive difference in the world.

624
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,760
Speaker 1: We need more people of that. ILK. If you guys

625
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes,

626
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:41,320
Speaker 1: or maybe there's a guest I should have on the show,

627
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: or someone you would like to have as a temporary

628
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: co host. Someone just sits in on a couple of episodes.

629
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,040
Speaker 1: Let me know, send me a message. The email address

630
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works

631
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: dot com, or draw me a line on Facebook or

632
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 1: Twitter to handle at both of those tech stuff hs W.

633
00:35:57,560 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: If you want to watch live, go to twitch dot

634
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: tv slash tech stuff. You can watch me on Wednesdays

635
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:06,800
Speaker 1: and Friday's record this show as I cough and sputter

636
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: and make mistakes and Ramsey patiently waits for me to

637
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:13,720
Speaker 1: get my act together and then we continue the show.

638
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: I would love to see you there, so twitch shot

639
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: tv slash tech stuff and I'll talk to you guys

640
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of

641
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: other topics, is how stuff works dot com