Homework #10, Researching

I know I only had to do one to two paragraphs, yet I found these topics to be very attention grabbing once I was reading the articles.
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In the year 1992, right after I was born, my mom purchased a pager. She also bought a pager for my babysitter, so that she could stay in touch with my dad and baby sitter if they ever needed her. This is before they had cell phones; pagers were most convenient at the time. You cannot pick up a call from the pager, nor could you text message or answer back. Whenever a pager beeped, it meant that you had to get to the nearest phone and call the number on the screen back.

“The best moment of having it was when Ra (my baby sitter) paged me after the first bomb in the world trade center. You were one and you guys were there right before it went off so I was sooo glad to hear from her!” The World Trade Center Bombing, February 26th, 1993: a moment in the time of beepers, told by my mom.

While reading the article on beepers and pagers, I found many parts of it to be fascinating. One thing that I got out of the article is that beepers and pagers used to be used for just doctors, and plumbers, yet it became used for husbands and wives, school kids, helping the elderly keep in touch with their children if there was ever an emergency. The article talks about a pregnant woman who had a beeper so that she could buzz her husband when it was ‘time’.

Even though I was less than one year old when my mom bought her pager, and I wasn’t even alive when the article came out, I can relate to some of the stuff in the article. I thought that it was interesting that the pager is banned in some schools and colleges because it is associated with drug trafficking. This reminded me of when they tried to ban all cell phones from schools and my friends and I were really angry when we found out they were trying to ban us from carrying cell phones.

While it costs more now for a cell phone, I found it interesting that: “the units rent for $2 to $3.50 a day or $10 to $17.50 a week, depending on the model. Like a Starter, or Sampler Kit”. I’m not sure if you can rent a cell phone today, but I found it interesting that a beeper was two dollars to three fifty a day to rent. Also, that the chain of beepers were rented in every store that had a video department. I know that today most stores that sell videocassettes are gone, and I can speak as an individual that I know I do not have a VCR in my mom’s house. So while reading about renting pagers in video stores, I thought it was sort of interesting that we don’t’ really have either of those things today. Some people still use pagers and beepers today, but it’s mainly doctors and nurses. Back then, more than two-thirds of the beepers were owned by business.

Features on the beeper/ pager, an interesting part that I found in the text: “More than 600 companies around the country, called carriers, offer one or more of four types of services: tone only, a sound or a vibration; tone and voice, a voice message of up to 10 seconds; numeric or digital, which displays a phone number to call; and alphanumeric, which displays a text message of up to 1,000 characters. 11 Million Rent or Own Them”


While researching beepers, I have been having discussions with my mom about when she used to own a beeper. The article said that beepers featured text messages, so I asked my mom about that: “Only numbers. But you can make simple words and we had some codes like 911 meant a problem and we had one for ok but I can’t remember how we made it. Like ok but out of numbers. 0 and um… 4?””
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In the year 1843, the first fax machine was invented by Alexander Bain: “an amateur clock maker, Alexander Bain combined parts from clock mechanisms together with telegraph machines to invent his fax machine.” I often find it really interesting for people to be doing one thing, and mixing it all together to invent something new.

I know that to this day my dad has a fax machine, which he uses often to transmit and receive faxes that are to or from his clients. My dad is a contractor, so he is constantly receiving fax messages. If I had to transmit data, I think I would do it through the computer, yet I have seen the fax machine be useful to my dad.
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Another article that I found to be amusing is the invention of the electric telegraph and telegraphy. When I was reading the article on fax machines, it had a link to telegraphs; which is: “a now outdated communication system that transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that translated into a message.”

Samuel Morse (1791-1872) successfully invented “a telegraph system that was a practical and commercial success.” Samuel Morse was a professor of arts and design at NYU, when he proved “signals could be transmitted by wire”. Samuel Morse is the man who created Morse Code. “He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet, which moved a marker to produce written codes on a strip of paper.”

Annie Ellsworth, who was a young daughter of a friend of Morse’s, chose the line "What hath God wrought?" (Numbers XXIII, 23, by Rev. John Wesley”) to be the first completed line sent through by what was later known as Morse code. When I first read that quote it seemed very poetic for a young lady to pick, yet I found out it was said by a reverend.

When I was in I think eighth grade at School of the Future, I studied the Navajo code, which I found to be very fascinating. While I was reading about the invention of Morse Code I found it to be similar to the Navajo code. Both codes were transmitted through wire, and operators had to be able to translate the codes. They were both like a kind of language, a well as an outdated form of communication.
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References:
Beepers: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/07/news/a-new-role-for-beepers-keep-families-in-touch.html
Fax Machines: http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/a/fax_machine.htm
Telegraph, and Telegraphy: http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/telegraph.htm