Moviegoers were stunned when Humphrey Bogart picked up his phone in the 1954 movie “Sabrina” – in his car.
Yes, the car phone was once the height of mobile device technology and has been around far longer than you may think. The first car phone was an 80-pound behemoth installed mostly in military, reporting, and rural vehicles and operated on a small network of telephone poles picking up hexagonal waves, introduced in the early 1940s. But technology quickly advanced, moving phones to high-end cars (hence the Bogart endorsement). Photos from the late 1950s and early 1960s show a rotary-dial phone attached to the dashboard. Though still basic, it felt like something that belonged far in the future.
Then it began to go mainstream. Before 3G and 4G phones, the first 0G network was developed for commercial use in Finland in the early '70s. From there, it grew in popularity around the world and became a staple in limousines and other elite forms of transportation. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the car phone was seen as a symbol of wealth and power – a way to conduct business while driving your car! – and seemed to offer endless possibilities in the world of telecommunications. So why no phones attached to cars today?
The car phone actually ended up changing the world in a different way: by being the precursor to the cellphone. Phones were pulled off the dashboard, but still used the mobile “G” networks to create the mobile phone network and usher in the cellphone era. By the mid-nineties, phones no longer had to be attached to a car to be mobile. Though, let’s be honest, we’d all attach a rotary phone to our dashboard if it made us look as cool as Humphrey Bogart.
