You have to be of a certain age and have a geeky technical bent to know what "07734" means. At first glance it would seem to be a zip code, specifically the one for Keansburg, NJ. And while that is indeed the case, if you type the number into a calculator that has an old 7-segment numeric display, and turn it upside down, it will spell out "hello." Yes, a stupid pet trick, but it might light up a few memory neurons in your brain if you ever had a pager.
For most, pagers are a technological horse and buggy. Invented in 1921, they spread slowly till the mid-eighties, and were mostly confined to health care workers and first responders. But once the range increased and alphanumeric readouts were added, usage exploded, and suddenly 60 million units were in use. No longer was it just doctors and firemen who had a little black box on their belts, but plumbers, reporters and expectant fathers.
In the 1990's cell phones started to proliferate, and the era of instant personal two-way point-to-point communication was upon us. As cost came down and coverage went up, their usage spread. Smarter phones started to emerge, to the point we're now marking the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. Today's mini computers in our pockets and purses can do everything a pager does in at least ten different ways and more. And so if you open my bedside table and dig to the back, behind the old wallets and leftover foreign currency you'll find a scuffed up Motorola Bravo Beeper, good for nothing.
Nothing, that is, unless you are in Britain. Turns out that the National Health Service is one of the last bastions in the world of pager use. According to estimates, more than one in ten of the world's beepers are being used in the NHS. The given reason is that while those little black boxes are limited in what they do, they do that very well. When cellular service is spotty, like deep in the bowels of a hospital, calls get dropped or texts don't always go through. But pagers, with their relatively low-tech quick, short bursts of data running on their own network generally connect. Add to that the fact that a single AA battery powers them for a month or more, and they have a place in an environment that requires can't-miss communication.
To be sure, the Brits could replace their nearly 130,000 pagers with newer mobile software, and save an estimated $3.5 million. But consider the comments made by the city manager in Key West, Florida. In the aftermath of Irma slapping the state silly, he talked about the devastation to almost every physical structure that existed. He extolled the soundness of their recently completed high school which was used as a shelter and refuge for those who stayed behind. And he talked about how while their communication infrastructure was decimated, at least they still had a working POTS line.
POTS, which is an acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service, is a throwback to the early days of the Bell system. Like a scene from an old World War II movie, it was real copper wire strung from point to point which carried not only voice but power, making it a self-standing system. Plug in a phone at each end, dial the other, and you were connected. It wasn't sexy or multi-functional or feature rich. But it was also not dependent on internet or cell towers or computers. And so when everything else went down, it stayed up.
Like the Key West POTS lines, those antiquated pagers might someday be of value when a technological tsunami hits. To be fair, they do require some infrastructure beyond a roll of copper. But compared to the 4G networks and fiber optics and touch screens that we access hundreds of time a day, they are tanks compared to the Porsches in our pockets today. As it is there are lots of places I can't get a solid signal on a bright and sunny day while riding the train to work, less than 50 miles from one of most connected cities on the planet. I shudder to think what would happen if Irma or her siblings trained their eye on the Empire State Building. Maybe the pager in my drawer deserves a second chance.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is trying to clear out old things with plugs. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
For most, pagers are a technological horse and buggy. Invented in 1921, they spread slowly till the mid-eighties, and were mostly confined to health care workers and first responders. But once the range increased and alphanumeric readouts were added, usage exploded, and suddenly 60 million units were in use. No longer was it just doctors and firemen who had a little black box on their belts, but plumbers, reporters and expectant fathers.
In the 1990's cell phones started to proliferate, and the era of instant personal two-way point-to-point communication was upon us. As cost came down and coverage went up, their usage spread. Smarter phones started to emerge, to the point we're now marking the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. Today's mini computers in our pockets and purses can do everything a pager does in at least ten different ways and more. And so if you open my bedside table and dig to the back, behind the old wallets and leftover foreign currency you'll find a scuffed up Motorola Bravo Beeper, good for nothing.
Nothing, that is, unless you are in Britain. Turns out that the National Health Service is one of the last bastions in the world of pager use. According to estimates, more than one in ten of the world's beepers are being used in the NHS. The given reason is that while those little black boxes are limited in what they do, they do that very well. When cellular service is spotty, like deep in the bowels of a hospital, calls get dropped or texts don't always go through. But pagers, with their relatively low-tech quick, short bursts of data running on their own network generally connect. Add to that the fact that a single AA battery powers them for a month or more, and they have a place in an environment that requires can't-miss communication.
To be sure, the Brits could replace their nearly 130,000 pagers with newer mobile software, and save an estimated $3.5 million. But consider the comments made by the city manager in Key West, Florida. In the aftermath of Irma slapping the state silly, he talked about the devastation to almost every physical structure that existed. He extolled the soundness of their recently completed high school which was used as a shelter and refuge for those who stayed behind. And he talked about how while their communication infrastructure was decimated, at least they still had a working POTS line.
POTS, which is an acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service, is a throwback to the early days of the Bell system. Like a scene from an old World War II movie, it was real copper wire strung from point to point which carried not only voice but power, making it a self-standing system. Plug in a phone at each end, dial the other, and you were connected. It wasn't sexy or multi-functional or feature rich. But it was also not dependent on internet or cell towers or computers. And so when everything else went down, it stayed up.
Like the Key West POTS lines, those antiquated pagers might someday be of value when a technological tsunami hits. To be fair, they do require some infrastructure beyond a roll of copper. But compared to the 4G networks and fiber optics and touch screens that we access hundreds of time a day, they are tanks compared to the Porsches in our pockets today. As it is there are lots of places I can't get a solid signal on a bright and sunny day while riding the train to work, less than 50 miles from one of most connected cities on the planet. I shudder to think what would happen if Irma or her siblings trained their eye on the Empire State Building. Maybe the pager in my drawer deserves a second chance.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is trying to clear out old things with plugs. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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