http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/08/spies-1.html

mobile phones

TRX
August 7, 2012
153:
The best way was always to find a disaffected native, train him up, and set him to work. The problem was finding that native.

Now, that's *much* easier...


TRX
August 8, 2012
169:
@110:
Mobile telephony only been around for 10-20 years
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Richard S. Prather's playboy-PI Shell Scott had a car phone in his Cadillac convertible in the early 1950s. The phone (and his answering service) were used in many of the novels and short stories.

A friend of mine had a cellular phone in 1986 that I know of. He might have got it a couple of years earlier. It was a large handbag with a telephone handset in it and cost a small fortune for the service contract.

Sometimes things are around for years or decades before they build momentum and jump to the mass market.


TRX
August 11, 2012
322:
@263:
GPS was developed originally as an aid to navigation at sea, for use by the US navy
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My brother-in-law helped lay out the testing protocols, then hand-wired the first GPS transmitters, which were flown around in aircraft while the ground receivers were tested. He was working for a contractor for the United States Air Force.

He said there were several orbital radio navigation systems proposed by different contractors, and the infighting between them was extremely political. According to him, the system we have now is a descendant of the USAF one he worked on, not one of the others.

I've been pushing him to write a monograph or something about his experiences in the early days of GPS, but he doesn't think anyone would be interested.