Hello all, I came across an interesting citation today. It seems that in 1907 the King Chulalongkorn of Siam was on a visit to Norway. As a part of his travel report there is the following discussion of the potential for what we now call Mobile telephony.
"In the evening they returned to Notodden, and during dinner the king talked with Birkeland (one of the founders of the company Norsk Hydro) about the mysteries of electricity. He heard, among other things about Birkeland's idea about an electrical cannon and an idea about making rain. He also heard that Hydro had inventions and plans on telegraphic communication without wires or cables, but this project was not being pursued. As a result of this, the prophetically king wrote "It is not daring to predict that in the future there might be a portable telephone like a small personal watch. When you want to talk with someone, you can just talk into the watch and then put your ear against it to hear what the other person has said." The Original Norwegian is: at http://www.almanakken.uio.no/temaartikler/norgesreise_2007b.html He may have been thinking of crystal radios since it was only about this time that vacuum tubes were being developed by Fleming and De Forest in the US. It certainly predates the similar comment by Osborne (the recently retired chief engineer for AT&T) who in a 1954 National Geographic article said: "Lets say that in the ultimate, whenever a baby is born anywhere in the world he [sic] is given at birth a number that will be his telephone number for life. As soon as he can talk, he is given a watch like device with 10 little buttons on one side and a screen on the other [see Figure 8.1]. Thus equipped, at any time when he wishes to talk with anyone in the world, he will pull out the device and punch on the keys the number of his friend. Then, turning the device over, he will hear the voice of his friend and see his face on the screen, in color and in three dimensions. If he does not see him and hear him, he will know that the friend is dead." Rich L. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mobile-society" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-society?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
