(Un) Mobile phone - hey 80's laydeez!

80'sphone/brick!
Originally uploaded by rockmother.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Found this old polaroid of me in 1989 with a (un) mobile phone. I tell you, I was the envy of my business. It was ridiculously cumbersome and had a HUGE battery charger which was the size and weight of a breezeblock. I don't have that anymore otherwise I would have put up a picture of that too. It needed it's own sub-station to get any sort of power out of it and was so big and heavy that it was quite hard to lug around and look professional at the same time.

It had squashy plastic buttons that you had to press really hard in order for it to register on the very basic LED screen. If you pressed them too hard then you would get a long line of one number and have to start all over again. I seem to remember that making calls was extremely expensive compared to today's rates and connection was very slow. Those were the days when Cellnet was THE network and text messages had not been invented. I guess pagers filled that gap for a while.

Prior to that I used to go around with bags of 10 pence pieces and a fat filofax to make calls when on location. Somehow we managed! Here's a fun link if you are into this sort of thing. I wish I'd kept it now.