A long time ago on a ship far away, when you sailed off, you were gone. It certainly was so for my relatives leaving the non-safety of the Pale and making the journey to a new and different world. Maybe a letter sent in hope would cross the ocean via ship and actually find the recipient at the end of its journey. But that was the end of the 19th Century and the first years of the 20th.
I can remember as a very young child hearing radio programs and a few years later, a small rabbit eared TV in the living room whose channels were changed by turning a dial. Also about this time, or perhaps a couple of years later there was a phone on the kitchen wall. It had a dial. The only other thing I remember about it was that the dialing number ended in 1101. More than a few calls resulting in adults being disgusted and explaining that dialing “1” twice didn’t get you to 2….
And then there was the phone on the wall in another house which was on a party line. No, not a situation where you would EVER mention anything on a phone call that could come back to haunt you since ….party line and someone was always listening in.
We went from dials on phones to push buttons. Fixed on walls to sitting on tables.
The years passed. The Wall came down. All of a sudden there was a huge push to get communications into Eastern Europe; there was a market for phones in a situation where the infrastructure just wasn’t there. In areas where there was no money or materials to put in phone lines.
The first portable phone I met was in 1995, built by Motorola and was bigger than a brick. It didn’t function in all areas, since there weren’t enough towers. A few years after that saw the onset of car phones… The portable telephone, as it was developed, because smaller and lighter. The usage shifted from fixed to a location/vehicle to be practically affixed to the human being who owned it.
Why am I saying all this? I was thinking back to my first Transatlantic (Nov 2007) sailing on the MSC Sinfonia from Genoa to Buenos Aires. I went back and read those posts. I have no memory of how I posted them. Perhaps using the computers available for pay on the ship? Fast forward a few years and Wifi becomes available on most cruise ships and keeping in touch is a little easier but still pricey.
Meanwhile, those hand held portable communication devices are getting smaller, lighter and can be carried around.
Skipping the last almost 20 years – everyone expects to be able to reach anyone, anytime, and anywhere in the world. One’s cell phone can do just about anything. Certainly I can connect to a Zoom conference for CME or to join a bi-weekly stitching group, I can use FaceTime or WhatsApp to connect with family and friends just about anywhere in the world. I can take my phone, walk around the ship and serve as tour guide via FaceTime.
Do I miss the days when getting in the car or on a ship meant being out of communication range for the time traveling?
Chuckling. My grandfather was a US Senator and around 1950 he bought a small cabin high up in the mountains on the opposite side from a ski resort. It had no phone and no chance of getting one, just a small patio overlooking a very very cold-in-the-summer creek from the melting ice above and an iron railing around the patio that swooped down in scallops. I remember my astonishment at being told that was from the weight of all the snow.
He left instructions to his staff that if it was a true emergency, call the small general store and he would hike a mile down there every day to check for messages or in the worst case they would send someone up the road to tell him to come talk to them.
He wanted his time away from the clamor of DC and made sure he got it.