The mobile phone? It’s not exactly a new idea.
Sweden’s Lars Magnus Ericsson invented the world’s first car phone in 1910. Sure, it didn’t work unless he hooked it into wires along the side of the road. But it was mobile.
And as far back as 1922, a British newsreel was showing off a mobile phone that didn’t need wires. You can see it in the video above, and what a sight it is. Demonstrated by two Jazz Age women, it uses an umbrella as an antenna. It ropes in a fire hydrant too. And somehow, it lets them call up some tunes from a distant operator, as if they dialing into some sort of Roaring ’20s Spotify service.
But as you might guess, it’s not really a phone. In a 2010 blog post, onetime newsreel giant British Pathe explained that the two women are probably just using a good old fashioned radio. “The two ladies are using a small simple HF radio, probably a ‘Cat’s Whisker’ type,” former British Army Royal Corps of Signals officer Simon Atkins told Pathe. “For it to work, it needs to be earthed, which is why it’s connected to the fire hydrant.”
Indeed, technology journalist and historian Matt Novak points out that in the early 20th century the term “wireless telephone” typically referred to these cat’s whisker receivers, also known as crystal radio receivers.
In other words, the women in the newsreel probably aren’t having a two-way conversation with the operator who plays the record.
But Novak also points to a Washington Post article from 1910 that shows how crystal radios are operate a lot like telephones. “Wives can call husbands at their offices or on the way to Harlem or the suburbs in the car and say: ‘Do stop at the butcher’s on the corner and get some liver and bacon!'” it reads.
Gender politics were a little different a hundred years ago. And so was technology. But just like today, people wanted to be mobile.
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