1940's Mobile Phone Broadcast by Western Electric - Recorded 80 Years Ago!

The first car telephones connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network in the United States were put into service in 1946, as a response to the growing mobility of the American population in the postwar years.Show more

Initial design of the mobile telephone itself was undertaken by the Western Electric Corporation, the prime supplier of telephone sets to the nation's Bell System operating companies, while Bell Laboratories itself designed the overall system and set the specifications for the equipment.

At the same time, the independent telephone companies were developing their own equipment, to be supplied by Automatic Electric. The Bell System equipment built upon an already existing mobile radio set, Western Electric's 1945 vintage Type 38 or 39 VHF FM police radio equipment, adding a telephone style handset and a selective calling decoder, which rang a bell in the automobile when that phone's unique number was signaled.

The selective calling decoder consisted of a small wheel in a glass enclosure, with pins located at certain points around its circumference. The decoder had been developed in the 19th century for railway right-of-way signaling, was later used in ship to shore radio telephone installations in the 1930's, and was a proven concept. This decoder was labeled "102." Western Electric and the Bell companies thus did not draw up an entirely new concept for a car telephone in 1946; they used proven components of other systems to create the new public car telephone service.