Telephones
Control your mobile phone with your feet
Researchers are developing a way to input commands on your phone as you walk by altering your stride, or moving your feet in various ways. They call these "gait gestures."So if you see someone walking funny, perhaps they're just sending a text.
More info: "Gait Gestures: Examining Stride and Foot Strike Variation as an Input Method While Walking"; Waterloo News
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jan 26, 2025 -
Comments (6)
Category: Technology, Telephones, Feet
The phone company wants installers like Alana MacFarlane
In the early 1970s, AT&T was faced with bad publicity. During congressional hearings, it had been revealed that although the phone company was the largest employer of women in the country, almost all of those women were employed as low-paid telephone operators. There were almost no women in higher paying jobs, such as in repair or installation. AT&T responded to the criticism with the two ads below.
Ms magazine - July 1972
Sports Illustrated - June 12, 1972
Was Alana MacFarlane a real person? Absolutely. Even before the magazine ads appeared, AT&T had been making sure to let the media know that it had hired a female installer. The media responded with nudge-nudge wink-wink headlines:
Long Beach Independent - Dec 16, 1971
Torrance Daily Breeze - Apr 7, 1972
But the national spotlight AT&T had placed on MacFarlane proved uncomfortable for her. Within six months she had requested to be transferred to a desk job, ending her brief career as an installer.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser - Sep 14, 1972
A one-page blogspot blog, "Alana Macfarlane's story," created in 2010, gives some info about what subsequently became of her. She left AT&T, joined the Air Force for a while, and eventually became an engineer. It reveals that she was paid all of one dollar by AT&T for the ad she featured in.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 21, 2025 -
Comments (3)
Category: Advertising, Gender, Women, Telephones, 1970s
Telephone Muffler
Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 13, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Inventions, Telephones, 1910s
Forty-Five Men in a Telephone Booth
Entry for the group at Discogs.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 13, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Music, Telephones, 1950s
The Ediphone Sets You Free
Businessman likes to imagine that because he doesn't always have enough time to dictate correspondence to his secretary that he's clearly "chained down like a galley slave."More info about Ediphones.
The Reporter with Postage and the Mailbag - Sep 1939
Posted By: Alex - Tue May 21, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Technology, Telephones, Advertising, 1930s
Meet Miss Electronic
Once upon a time answering machines were considered strange and dumbfounding.
Wilmington News Journal - Mar 31, 1956
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 18, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Technology, Telephones, 1950s
1963 Prediction of Mobile Phones
In 1963 the Mansfield News-Journal predicted that, "Some day, Mansfielders will carry their telephones in their pockets."So when did the first phone debut that could be carried in a pocket? Depends on the size of the pocket, I guess. But I think it was arguably the Motorola StarTAC, that came out in 1996 — 33 years after the News-Journal prediction.
Mansfield News-Journal - Apr 18, 1963
Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 15, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Technology, Telephones, Yesterday’s Tomorrows
Dial Comes to Town
Posted By: Paul - Thu Nov 30, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Family, PSA’s, Technology, Telephones, 1940s
Phone-Carrying Bra
The patent is here.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 03, 2023 -
Comments (7)
Category: Inventions, Telephones, Underwear, Twenty-first Century
What will the telephone be like when I grow up?
Perhaps some day in the future you may just speak the number into the transmitter and get your party automatically.
The introduction of universal direct dialing was a pretty safe guess in 1953, since direct dialing had, by then, already been introduced in some places.
It's more impressive that the ad writers also successfully predicted the introduction of voice recognition technology.
Life - May 18, 1953
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 11, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Technology, Telephones, 1950s, Yesterday’s Tomorrows
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |