I'm so old I Remember when:

[jxp]

OhMaGosh! YOU FOUND MY BIKE! It was 'Lectric Orchid and had exactly those accessories ... and a cool ding-y bell, too!

What - no streamers on the handle bars? Practically nekkid.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

I wanted to take "shop" but I couldn't because I was a female. By the time our kids were in Jr High they were able to choose shop or home ec. I told the girls to take shop and our son to take home ec. I figured as they got older they would learn how to cook or use tools by themselves. Our son actually loved home ec he was the only boy in a class full of girls.

Well, that's not fair. We didn't have split girls/boys classes in my school. Everyone was required to take a semester of shop and a semester of home ec, usually in the same year, I think it was eighth grade.

I wish shop had included auto mechanics but it was wood working. You picked a few projects and worked on them for the semester. I made a mirror-backed wooden wall planter, sort of like this. It was fun but I would rather have learned about car engines.

Home ec was sewing and cooking. We had to sew an animal-themed pillow and bake several things from scratch including chocolate chip cookies. I sewed some kind of cat-shaped pillow if I remember correctly, similar to these:

Everyone knew when the eighth grade was baking cookies because it smelled sooooo good and you could smell them throughout the school. Before we started cooking, the teacher told the class a really gross story about a spider who laid eggs in flour so that no one would want to eat the raw cookie dough. (It worked!)

 

[jxp]

How does a pager work? Is it like a radio?

Technically, pagers do use radio frequency but the don't work like a radio in that they don't broadcast.

They're more like a phone in that you dial the number of the pager. Unlike a phone in that instead of answering and taking, it would sound an alert such as a buzz or a ding or a ring (depending on manufacturer) and/or vibrate. Then the phone number of the person who was paging would display and the person with the pager would have to find a phone to call back.

 

[RoyalChick]

How does a pager work? Is it like a radio?

I had two different kinds in different jobs. The first one beeped and I had to call in to a central number who told me who needed me or gave me a message.
Then later I got a more advanced one that beeped but had a screen that showed the number to call back.
You couldn't make the call on the pager, you had to go find a phone and call the number you were told needed you to call.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

I had two different kinds in different jobs. The first one beeped and I had to call in to a central number who told me who needed me or gave me a message. Then later I got a more advanced one that beeped but had a screen that showed the number to call back.
You couldn't make the call on the pager, you had to go find a phone and call the number you were told needed you to call.

If I remember correctly, pagers started out being used by doctors, both in and out of hospitals (didn't some of the doctors in the House, M.D. tv show still have pagers)? A friend of mine who worked for the Red Cross had one so he could be notified in case of emergencies.

Then pagers got really popular with drug dealers and got a bad reputation. Motorola quickly rectified this by campaigning for parents to give them to teenagers to keep track of them and notify them to call home, trying to rebrand pagers as wholesome tools for families. They were also a status thing as they started being used by upscale/well-to-do families first.

Finally restaurants started using them with customers. If you had to wait for a table they'd give you a pager so you could leave the restaurant and didn't have to sit there while you waited, they'd just send you a message on the pager when your table was ready.

 

[Evadig]

Technically, pagers do use radio frequency but the don't work like a radio in that they don't broadcast.

They're more like a phone in that you dial the number of the pager. Unlike a phone in that instead of answering and taking, it would sound an alert such as a buzz or a ding or a ring (depending on manufacturer) and/or vibrate. Then the phone number of the person who was paging would display and the person with the pager would have to find a phone to call back.

So you couldn’t contact other people but they could contact you?

 

[RoyalChick]

If I remember correctly, pagers started out being used by doctors, both in and out of hospitals (didn't some of the doctors in the House, M.D. tv show still have pagers)? A friend of mine who worked for the Red Cross had one so he could be notified in case of emergencies.

Then pagers got really popular with drug dealers and got a bad reputation. Motorola quickly rectified this by campaigning for parents to give them to teenagers to keep track of them and notify them to call home, trying to rebrand pagers as wholesome tools for families. They were also a status thing as they started being used by upscale/well-to-do families first.

Finally restaurants started using them with customers. If you had to wait for a table they'd give you a pager so you could leave the restaurant and didn't have to sit there while you waited, they'd just send you a message on the pager when your table was ready.

Both mine were before the drug dealer stage and long, long before the restaurant phase.

 

[RoyalChick]

So you couldn’t contact other people but they could contact you?

They couldn’t really contact you. Only alert you that they wanted you to contact them.

 

[Sally PB]

Back in the 80s, I used to go to the symphony by myself. There was a (prominent) notice in the program that "doctors on call should leave their seat location with the nearest usher. Please turn off all pagers."

 

[Sally PB]

Speaking of disturbing a live performance... remember when digital watches would beep on the hour???

They were not all synched, like phones now, to the correct time; you had to set them. So at 8:00 (when the symphony concert started), you heard beeps all through the audience. And again at 9:00, from those who DID NOT SILENCE THEIR PHONES!

At one concert, the conductor asked everyone to please set their phones to "silent mode" so that there would be no beeping. It got a chuckle from the audience, but I didn't hear any beeps that night.