On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:07:32 -0500, Mike Coslo wrote:

Pickup a cell phone, dial, and talk. There's no magic
in that.

I remember making telephone calls to other countries when I was a little
kid in the 60's. The Transatlantic cable was laid in the mid 19th
century. People could talk a long way away then too. Worldwide
communications pre-dates radio communications. It's a matter of
infrastructure.

I think I will drop my oar into this one too.

Being able to call someone in China is not the same thing as calling
out, and getting a response from someone in China. A.G. Bell's
practical invention of telephony long preceded practical (or even
impractical) radiotelephony and no one seemed to care, but many got
excited.

And to invert the argument. When I lived in Europe in the late 50s
early 60s, Paris had such a funky telephone system that reportedly you
could dial a "special number" that put you into an open common trunk
where others would have been already deep in spontaneous conversation.
It was very popular and "exciting...." until they fixed it (in their
own time, of course - for the French that could have been many years
later).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC