[GreenKeys] Early Mobile Telephone and associated equipment

[Don Robert House]

Happy Easter from the area of two Valentines Day Massacres.

When I was transferred to transmission engineering at Illinois Bell,  
we had a district level and staff for radio systems.  The group had a  
1 ton Ford van with every kind of radio telephone the company had in  
service.  What a monster.  The roof looked like a porcupine with so  
many antennas.  If it was black instead of white people would have  
thought it was a Secret Service van.  When I had to make field trips I  
would borrow the van instead of driving one of the tiny coupes they  
wanted us to get from the motor pool.  Trying to maneuver that big van  
up a circular drive from a basement garage was quite a trick.  You had  
to keep blowing the horn so that no one would try to drive down at the  
same time you were driving up.

  We had our problems with AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) in  
Chicago.  An easy place to trial cellular since MOTO is headquartered  
in the suburbs.  Early sets were still quite large and had separate  
control heads like IMTS, and two antennas on the trunk lid.  In the  
beginning there were not enough cell sites and the switching was not  
always reliable.  The company's executive limos (navy blue Lincoln  
Town Cars) were all equipped with this early cellular equipment.  In  
those days the equipment was very expensive.  As more sites were  
installed the service became quite reliable until the phones started  
to become miniaturized.

The first couple of designs of miniature and sub-miniature cellular  
phones were provided to the same limos and the earlier larger sets  
were removed.  A big mistake.  The small sets would frequently drop  
calls.  The chauffeurs were responsible for the security of the phones.

One day the first Chairman of Ameritech was talking on one of the new  
small phones on Lake Shore Drive.  He lost a call he thought was  
important.  He had the chauffeur pull over and he through the phone  
into Lake Michigan.  This worried the chauffeur.  He reported the  
incident to his foreman as soon as he returned to the company garage.

The foreman told him "If the CEO wants to go for a drive every day  
along the lakefront and toss a phone in the lake, don't worry about  
it.  Just let me know how many phones I need to order every friday  
afternoon."

The chairman was, and I suppose, still is one of those egomaniacs that  
are "legends in their own minds!  He felt he was so important he  
developed a staff larger than AT&T had and had two 727s and four  
pilots in a hangar at Midway Airport.  In 1984 because of the funding  
of Ameritech, Illinois Bell fell from No. 1 earner in the Bell System  
to No. 19. Right down there near Southwestern Bell, system earner  
number 22.

There are other stories but no one would believe them.  Like picking  
up components at Newark on Chicago's west side.  11 foot cyclone  
fencing with razor wire and electrically operated "air locks" for  
secure entry and exit.  Then there was East St. Louis,  Illinois, the  
only place in the Bell System where a cable splicer was shot for his  
wallet.  The central office had two armed guards at each entrance  
24/7.  If you were in the building after 4 p.m. you were required to  
stay overnight in a bunk room.  No one will admit to it but 90 percent  
of the employees were armed.  No one went on a job alone.

Perhaps someone would like to write about the trials of  
teletypewriters in police cars.  It would be a little more on subject  
than mobile phones...


Don
Ye Olde Telephone Man



On 23 Mar 2008, at 3:55 PM, Peter Gottlieb wrote:

I do remember a bunch about the IMTS system.  I was sent to a course  
on setting up one of the latter Motorola IMTS base stations then  
supervised and signed off on one such install.  I also had a UHF units  
in my car, it was the really big and heavy one which used a varactor  
tripler to get into the 450 MHz area.  The PAs were somewhat  
unreliable.  The supervisory board was a mass of discrete components  
and always fun to work on.  These units used channel elements  
(crystals mounted in their own cans with oscillators).  Later on  
Motorola came out with the synthesized Pulsar mobiles which were much  
better.

There were two sets of channels for each city in both VHF and UHF.   
One set was for the monopoly carrier (eg, Bell System) and the other  
set for the new independent carrier.  There were very few channels as  
you note and there was a significant waiting list to get a phone.  If  
I remember correctly, it was 6 years in the NYC area.  The IMTS was a  
dialtone system; when you went off-hook your phone had an interaction  
with the base system where your phone number was sent in and then you  
got a dialtone.  Dialing was rotary and tone encoded with parity  
tones.  When that CO in NYC burned down the Bell System "commandeered"  
the IMTS systems and used them for emergency communications with cars  
driving around making important calls for people until basic phone  
service was restored.

The phones had only 7 digits of phone number setting.  In the Bell  
system, the phone number (which was set with jumpers in the phone) was  
3 digits for the area code then the last four digits of your mobile  
number.  Independents did whatever they wanted, some followed this,  
others didn't.

I had a big fat HT-220 which had a bunch of the IMTS channels  
crystalled and I could talk to the operator and get her to connect me  
if I said some magic words.  This had been loaned to me from one of my  
clients and they refused to take it back later.  I think I gave it  
away when the battery would no longer hold a charge.

When I bought my first cellular phone Motorola had a deal where you  
would get a $500 credit if you turned in your old phone and believe it  
or not they took my ancient IMTS unit and I did get that check from  
them.  I still see the mobile units and control heads at hamfests.

Word from an insider at Motorola was that the first cellular trial in  
NYC was faked.  There was a tech pulling the levers behind the  
curtain, the automatic part was not yet ready.  Nevertheless, the  
technology behind the idea was sound and developed into the revolution  
that cell phones became.

Peter




Duncan M. Brown wrote:
> Anyone with early mobile telephone equipment that you don't know  
> what to do
> with, the Antique Wireless Assoc. Museum would appreciate having  
> it.  I
> have put together a small display of IMTS & early cellular equipment  
> for
> the Museum, but we do not have anything prior to IMTS.
>
>
> A little more history:
>
> The first Bell System Mobile Telephone service began in St. Louis 17  
> June
> 1946 on on six channels (120 Kc spacing) in the 152/158 Mc band.   
> These
> channels were later split into 60 Kc and then 30Kc channel spacings  
> and
> were given two-letter desiginations starting with "J" or "Y": JL,  
> YL, JP,
> etc. (were one of these letter groups the earlier pre-split  
> channels?). There were plans to split the channels again into 15 Kc  
> channels with "X"
> designators: eg XJ, XK, etc.  This was never instituted in the US as  
> the
> Cellular channels were finally opened. (But they were in use in  
> Canada in
> 1985.)
>
> The Mobile Telephone Highway service started in 1947 in the Boston  
> to New
> York City corridor on 35/44 Mc. and used "Z" designators: ZO, ZF,  
> ZH, etc.
> As of 1985, there were still two dozen cities in the US using the Z
> channels. These channels were shut down in about 1988.
>
> In 1956, 12 UHF channels with 25 Kc spacing were made available in the
> 454/459 Mc band and had channel designators starting with "Q": eg  
> QC, QJ,
> QD, etc.
>
> In 1953, AT&T proposed to the FCC a "broadband" mobile telephone  
> system
> operating in the 800Mc region. But it took until 1978 for the first
> cellular test system to go on the air and not until 1983 for the first
> commercial cellular system to go on the air (in Chicago).
>
> IMTS started in 1964 with field trials in Harrisburg, PA.  It was  
> initally
> known as "Interim Mobile Telephone Service" ("interim" until  
> cellular was
> available).  When they realized that cellular was a ways off, it was
> changed to "Improved".
>
>
> Duncan Brown, K2OEQ
>
> AWA Electronic Communication Museum
> http://www.antiquewireless.org
>
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> GreenKeys mailing list
> GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
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>
>
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