Remember when pagers were high tech?

[davegarage]

I remeber pagers....

I had one as a fad in high school back in '82. Had that huge brick of a cell

phone not long after that. Gotta love the good old days.

What is funny here is that I am still more reliant on an actual voice call to

get my attention then a text or VM. Talk to me..... Text later.

Dave

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

Erich I remember the Halliburton Briefcases well When the cell phones came out, our office with 4 suitcase phones ( me and my partner and our wives) was the biggest account between New Iberia and Morgan city. The only ones bigger were the two hospitals in the respective towns! I even remember my first brick!
The 80's were a wonderful time Then the kids came

 

[David LaPell]

We never called them pagers, they were beepers. I also remember the first portable phone I ever say, my father had one of those extra large bag phones. If you really want to freak kids out today, try and find one of those projectors we had in school. Not the big reel type, the little ones that had to be advanced every time you heard the beep. We all fought to be the one running it and push the button.

 

[kraigwy]

I was EOD (bomb squad) and carried a pager. We got fancy and if you called the number you left a voice message to call whoever.

I also needed reading glasses. (Not sure what that has to do with pagers just wait)

I left my glasses home one night and was gonna run by the house to pick them up after fallout. But instead I got a call of a disturbance, man with a knife.

I arrived on the scene and come face to face with the bandit branishing his knife, threatening anyone in sight including me.

I drew my service revolver, ordering him to drop the knife. A bit of a stand off, so I told him drop the knife or else.

Just at that instant I get a BEEP BEEP BEEP, (it was the wife) "YOU LEFT YOUR GLASSES HOME"

The bandit says "ha you cant see to shoot anyway", then throws his knife down and takes off running.

I was laughing so hard I couldn't even chase him. Another cop had to run him down.

Pagers were fun.

 

[mjr]

Pagers? Anybody else remember when dial phones were high tech?

 

[arjay]

I remember how cool it was when we didn't share a party line.

 

[BrianE]

Had one of those back in the day... 20 bucks for a years service. We still have them for on call service at work.....

 

[David LaPell]

I remember how cool it was when we didn't share a party line.

It seemed every time we tried to talk to my grandparents someone else was using it. I love telling my younger relatives about growing up with rotary phones (I found one here in the basement of the house) and also about being the remote control for the three channels of television we had. If the President came on your night was shot!

 

[arjay]

I was one of those old farts that made fun of television remotes and cable tv

 

[LTC]

Me and my brother never needed a beeper or pager as kids. We could hear Mom calling us from a block and a half away.

LTC

 

[Snapping Twig]

I had a pager when they were a new idea. Started with the long skinny one, then the one that displayed the number and a message by way of codes - 999 emergency, etc.

Had a car phone that took up all the room under the driver's seat for the electronics.

Pager was a status symbol when they were new, but soon revealed themselves to be the ball and chain they really were.

 

[Double-O-Dave]

I was working for Motorola when they came out with the 2-way pager that allowed you to read and send text messages. The pager was about the size of your fist, and mounted horizontally on your belt. I always wore mine at about the 10:00 o'clock position. My daughter was around 2yrs. old at the time, and whenever I picked her up to carry her, she liked to use the pager as a foothold. Eventually, it broke the plastic holster for the pager. Trying to get a replacement holster was like pulling teeth. Finally, I called the distribution center and told them exactly the reason why I needed a new holster. I got a few "oooh's" and a new holster the next day. Also, if you asked my daughter what Santa Claus looked like, she would tell you he wore a Motorola 2-way pager on his belt - just like dad.

Good memories.

Regards,

Dave

 

[JaPes]

Remember the advent of call waiting? Talking to someone else then *BEEP*. It was mind-blowing to be able to switch between two calls. Got of the phone, the set my taped recorded message on my answering machine.

How about old AOL dial up? It was connection roulette. You never knew if you'd get connected at 14.4Kbps, 28.8Kbps, 36.6Kbps, or the ever elusive 56.6 Kbps maximum. I was a high roller back in the day. I had dedicated 2nd phone line just for AOL, hooked up with a rate plan that wasn't by the minute but rather by the single call connection.

Printing out documents on my tractor feed, parallel port, dot-matrix printer that was a pimped out model because it had black & red ribbons. Saving them to the high capacity 3.5" double sided high density floppy disk. I also had a 5.25" floppy drive to pick up all those old legacy files.

 

[Cyrano]

In 1942-43 my father was S3 (training and operations) officer for the Mississippi Ordnance Plant in Flora, which despite the name was a training base for Ordnance soldiers on the new hi-tech equipment like 2 1/2 ton trucks. We lived in Jackson, 26 miles away. He had a government car, with a radio that took up half the trunk. If I were with him he'd let me make the call to the gate that we were coming. Great fun, until he heard that they were wondering who that woman was with him.

 

[jdlii]

My back fence neighbor owned a pager company when we moved to our present location 17 years ago. I asked him when he was going to start carrying cell phones since the national companies had just started moving into Tennessee. His response was: "Everyone will still need a pager, even if they have a cell phone!" less than three years later, he was out of business and helping his adult son with his lawn care service.

 

[Fishslayer]

Pagers? Anybody else remember when dial phones were high tech?

How long before ya quit lookin' for the crank on the side?

 

[GRIZZLYBEAR]

I remember when the beepers first came out***figured I would have a needed for one, BUT I got a job driving a wrecker part time and the beeper became a part of me till I left that dead end job.

I remember the dial phones, party lines, when the boob tube came out, bomb shelters, Harry Truman, Sputnik 1, Mutnik, and I liked IKE.

Damn I didn't realize I was that old.

 

[rcnixon]

Funny story about a pager. My boss caught me in the hall at work late one morning and started to give me a hard time about not answering my pager. She had been trying to get me for a couple of hours. I shared an office with my project lead and we had been in our office all morning working on project stuff. Our office was a converted tape vault and, as such, was a Faraday cage. It was designed to keep out radio signals. I asked her if she thought to call me at my desk as I had been there all morning with the lead, actually working (surprise!). Nope, never called my desk, just kept on paging me with no answer. She later actually checked my story with my lead who confirmed it. We both confronted her (in private) with the lack of trust issue and things were smooth after that.

Russ