What if someone could call you on the telephone — while you were in your car?
Here’s How Mobile Phones Worked in 1959
What could you do if you had a “Phone in Your Car?” A British newsreel video explores the possibilities.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
That’s the astonishing premise of this 1959 clip from newsreel archive British Pathe. Heads up: Gender politics back then were also comparatively unsophisticated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR4hoSh0Ols
Pathe produced more than 90,000 newsreel clips during the 1900s, and it has now uploaded almost all of them to a YouTube channel.
If you have time to kill there’s amazing stuff there, including other glimpses of early technology (this isn’t technically a “wireless phone” from 1922, but it sure is interesting):
http://youtu.be/ILiLaRXHUr0
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
