[GreenKeys] Re: Early Mobile Telephone and associated equipment

[Don Robert House]

Thanks for sharing Art.

Don


On 24 Mar 2008, at 3:16 AM, Art Comings wrote:


Don,

I remember radio phones in cars in the mid '50s.  We bought our house  
South
of Dyer, IN from the owner of the Hammond radio station (WJOB, I think).
They operated a mobile radiophone service.  His eldest daughter was my  
age
and worked at the station during the summers in High School.  I  
stopped in a
couple of times and watched her take a landline call, then call the
requested car phone, then patch in the call.  When it was over, she'd  
unhook
the connection.  You had to be important to get that phone - and the  
bills
were pretty steep.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Robert House [mailto:k9tty at dls.net]
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 6:18 PM
To: nerd at verizon.net; Duncan-Nancy Brown
Cc: Greenkeys
Subject: Early Mobile Telephone and associated equipment

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
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
>
>
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