On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:06:50 +0100, "
wrote:

On 31/03/2012 03:36, Bruce wrote:
Charles wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:08:36 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
wrote:

Graham wrote:
On 30/03/2012 18:40, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Guy wrote:

What is a cell phone? Used in prisons?

Oh, good grief. You use the concept in your country.

You aren't aware that mobile phones use a cellular network?

I expect he is. Guy is pointing out that you are cross-
posting to two newsgroups where we call such devices
mobiles.

So if "cellular" is an international concept, is it acceptable to everyone
else for Guy to pretend to be obtuse?

In the United States, they are called cell phones and mobile phones.

Ditto in the UK with "cell phone" often used to distinguish them from
"cordless" telephones, both being mobile.


I had a very early Vodafone mobile phone in 1986, a Motorola with a
handset that clipped to the top of a lead/acid battery about the size
of one on my 1150cc motorcycle. It was marketed as a "cellular
telephone" or "cell phone" for short.

Those batteries almost weighed a tonne, did they not?

To make and receive calls was also not cheap, IIRC.


There were only two UK networks at that time, Vodafone and Cellnet.
Cellnet was of course a contraction of "cellular network".

So the term "cell phone" has been in use in the UK for more than a
quarter of a century.

I thought that the US military had coined and started using the
cellphone concept during World War II.

I think it was the digital side (packet switching etc.) of things that
the US military and others were playing with in more recent times. The
basic cellular concept (sans automatic switching) as described in e.g.
:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network
involves earlier zoned use by taxi firms in populated areas as a means
of re-using the same frequency on a relatively local basis by
providing sufficient distance from the nearest adjacent zones/cells
using the same frequencies but has no reference to military use.

Mind you, they were completely
different and nothing even like the bricks or dead-weights that one saw
in the 80s.