
In World War I, British biplanes had wireless phones in the cockpit - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/in-world-war-i-british-biplanes-had-wireless-phones-in-cockpit
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jerrysievert
my first exposure to mobile phones was through a Perry Mason episode, and I
was flummoxed. I was so enamored that I held my first mobile phone that I had
purchased in the early 90's with glee.

but, I was in no way the first, and it turns out there were over a million
mobile phones in cars in the 1960's, with a little more pedigree to what we
now have than the biplanes: [https://weburbanist.com/2012/09/18/remember-
millions-of-mobi...](https://weburbanist.com/2012/09/18/remember-millions-of-
mobile-phones-in-the-1960s-you-should/)

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ebruton
Just to clarify the use of phone / telephone: this is the contemporary
terminology used at the time.

Wireless telegraphy = Morse code used electromagnetic (radio / wireless) waves

Wireless telephony = voice sent over electromagnetic (radio / wireless) waves;
sometimes referred to as radio telephony, although using radio was more common
in US and Germany than UK until after the First World War.

And as a few other commentators pointed out, dialling is not an essential part
of a telephone.

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pmlnr
> (Prince published his findings after the war, in a 1920 journal of the
> Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). If you have a subscription to
> IEEE Xplore, you can read Prince’s paper here [PDF].)

Is this for real? A 100 year old paper is subscription only?

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doggodad
But did they get robocalls?

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chrisseaton
Why are they calling it a 'phone'? It's a conventional voice radio isn't it?
You can't dial anyone. Nobody calls modern military radios 'phones'.

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mulmen
Telephone literally means “far voice” in Greek. A device does not require a
dial pad to be a phone. The article establishes earlier radio communication as
using basically Morse code (telegraphy). This is a “phone” because it uses
voice (telephony) instead of some other signaling.

It’s not a common use of the word phone today but it is a reasonable
interpretation based on the technology of the time and how it was used.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Telephone literally means “far voice” in Greek.

That's not how words work. Dinosaur literally means terrible lizard, but they
aren't lizards nor necessarily terrible.

> It’s not a common use of the word phone today

Lol so why use it in an article today?

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tialaramex
It's true that Etymology (the source of the word) is neither Definition (a
documented meaning of the word) nor Usage (how most people use a word). Your
example of dinosaur is fair for showing this, nobody from the outset conceived
of the Dinosaur as really just being a "terrible lizard" (this makes me
imagine a very lazy gecko, can't be bothered to actually do much "You are a
terrible lizard").

BUT telephones really are about voice communications at a distance and not
about the particular mechanics that were popularized with the public telephone
network. Telephone "numbers", dialling, all that stuff was added later and
isn't part of the telephone concept. So although the Latin etymology isn't
_why_ these were telephones, they were anyway.

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jhbadger
"Terrible" has two meanings though -- invoking terror and being crap. Ivan the
Terrible wasn't a crap Czar -- he just was somebody you didn't want to get on
the wrong side of.

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chrisseaton
Does something like a diplodocus genuinely strike terror into you?

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jhbadger
They probably looked quite cute -- but so do hippopotamuses, which despite
being herbivores kill more humans than do lions. Never underestimate a large
animal. Even cows can be deadly.

~~~
chrisseaton
A hippopotamus has a jaw that will break a watermelon - don't mistake them for
cute!

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greenyoda
Interesting article, but the devices would more accurately be described as
"radio transmitters" than "wireless phones".

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johneth
Isn't that what wireless phones are?

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wl
Wireless phones transmit speech.

These only transmitted CW which was used to send Morse code.

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PeterisP
This article is very much about speech communication from these biplanes.

