Once upon a time ... the car phone
11/06/2024
Of course, one could now argue that in the age of USB ports and Bluetooth interfaces in the center console, virtually every mobile phone is also a car phone. At the same time, however, this generalization also confirms the message of this " Once upon a time..." article:The era of permanently installed telephones in cars is definitely over. Yet their heyday was not so long ago.
In 1959, the German postal service began setting up the "public mobile land radio service" with around 150 transmission masts in the Federal Republic of Germany. At that time, however, being able to talk from your own car was still a privilege that was only granted to a small number of the proverbial "upper ten thousand": in 1965, only 2,000 car connections were registered in the FRG.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the number rose to a good 6,000, only to literally explode in the following decade and increase to around 30,000 car phones by the end of the 1980s. From May 1972, it was even possible to dial a number from the car itself. Prior to this, automobile telecommunicators had to rely on the famous "Fräulen vom Amt". Later, even devices with automatic answering machines followed.
The "hands-free system", on the other hand, is much older. As early as 1962, Dan Schutz, Safety Director of the Wisconsin Motor Vehicle Department, developed a car phone with foot control and swivel microphone on the A-pillar. In Italy in the early 1950s, "autotelefono" referred to a network of telephones permanently installed along highways.
With the triumph of wireless cell phones, long-distance calls at the wheel eventually increased to such an extent that the legislator had to ban them. However, this has not stopped modern motorists from using them excessively. On the contrary: sometimes you get the feeling that driving distracts them from their cell phones.
