People have been trying to create a portable phone since Alexander Graham Bell first attempts. So, just how early on did someone finally succeed? According to The Daily Mail Online, W W McFarlane’s creation in the 1920’s was one of the earliest in portable phones.
The device, invented by Philadelpia experimenter W W McFarlane required three pieces of stove pipe stuck to a board as an aerial.
Unlike many wireless ‘telephones’ of the period, it could transmit and receive, like a contemporary telephone.
It worked over a range of up to 500 yards, the newspaper reports.
The ‘transceiver’ device was bulky – as well as the stove pipes, it required a box sitting in the car next to the chauffeur – but it was well ahead of its time.
Technologically, the device – unearthed in an Ohio newspaper, the Sandusky Register by Smithsonian.com, is more akin to a walkie talkie, as you had to ‘push to talk’, rather than having a true two-way conversation.
After the jump, a video about two New York women from 1922 and their portable phone that connects to a fire hydrant.