the term “wireless telephone” in the early 1920s didn’t necessarily mean a device that could both transmit and receive messages.
However, some inventors were having a lot of fun tinkering with what was essentially walkie-talkie technology, in that they were developing transceivers — devices that could both transmit and receive radio messages. An article in the March 21, 1920 Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio retold the story of a man in Philadelphia named W. W. Macfarlane who was experimenting with his own “wireless telephone.”
As the article notes, this story was first reported in an issue of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine The Electrical Experimenter.
Hugo Gernsback was also, of course, a very important figure in the blossoming of science fiction in the US. The most important annual awards for science fiction, the Hugo Awards, are named after him.
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1 Comment
Tomi Engdahl says:
The World’s First “Carphone”
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/2012/01/the-worlds-first-carphone/
the term “wireless telephone” in the early 1920s didn’t necessarily mean a device that could both transmit and receive messages.
However, some inventors were having a lot of fun tinkering with what was essentially walkie-talkie technology, in that they were developing transceivers — devices that could both transmit and receive radio messages. An article in the March 21, 1920 Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio retold the story of a man in Philadelphia named W. W. Macfarlane who was experimenting with his own “wireless telephone.”
As the article notes, this story was first reported in an issue of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine The Electrical Experimenter.
Hugo Gernsback was also, of course, a very important figure in the blossoming of science fiction in the US. The most important annual awards for science fiction, the Hugo Awards, are named after him.