There is no place like ether

This is the Marconiphone Model V2A (‘Long Range Model’) manufactured in 1923 by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraphy Co, Ltd. (chassis manufactured by Plessey, Holloway, London). The instrument is housed in a polished mahogany cabinet bearing the ‘BBC/PMG’ stamp and GPO Registration No. 0175. A contemporary advertisement for a similar model, the V2, is reproduced below. The price of £24, complete, was a considerable sum of money in 1923 and included £1 15s royalty paid to the BBC and 12s 6d per valve royalty paid to the Marconi company.

via This is the Marconiphone Model V2A.

Motorola’s first commercial cell phone cost $3,995

What’s so interesting is that nobody — including Motorola — thought the cell phone would be of much use to anyone. Because it was so big. Motorola’s real motivation in prototyping the cell phone, it turns out, was to get the FCC to allot more spectrum for car phones, which they saw as a lucrative market for their equipment-making business. But this is a fascinating R&D story — nobody thought they could pull it off. Well worth a read. And the photos are funny, too.

via Cell Phones of the Future Past – The Boston Globe.

Histoire du téléphone : évolution du portable | Kmenslow.

In the last post we discussed Braille wine labels. Today, Morse Code, as on this Australian wine label.

via Morse Code Labels | bevlog | beer, wine, spirits trends | beverage blog.

Here is a rare and spectacular photographic nighttime view of a powerful carbon arc searchlight shooting it beam over the illuminated Agricultural Building of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.  It was also called the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, and it ran from May to October 1893 in Chicago—in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the new world.  Over 27 million people visited and viewed the fair’s brilliance in the numerous displays of the nineteenth-century world’s industrial progress during its six-month run.  Note the similarity between this carbon arc lamp’s beam pattern and the ones posted on the ancient Egyptian walls at the Temple at Denderah.

via Carbon Arc Searchlights.