Once upon a time when I were lass, telephones came with a dial. They had letters as well as numbers, because only a few years earlier, you would dial the Exchange with letters. Scotland Yard was, famously, Whitehall 1212. Even today, the Met Police use 1212. My local nick is 020 7326 1212.
In 1989 a young family member received an activity centre for Christmas. I laughed because it included a telephone dial. By then it was standard for phones to be push button. You could only do two things with phones: make and receive voice calls.
In 85 or 86, after an evening out there was a suggestion of going back to someone's place. Finola needed to phone her parents to tell them where she was. Simon said he could use her carphone. I wasn't on that night out, but it became notorious. We all knew what carphones were, of course, but the idea of a Sixth Former having one was ludicrous. (Simon went on to be President of the Oxford Union but has no member notes on Friends Reunited.)
Nottingham South Labour Party took advantage of a promotional offer to use a couple of mobiles to assist with fighting the General Election.
Between 1989 and 1991 I became far more aware of mobiles, as I often travelled through the City. In late 94 two friends got their own - one because her father was waiting for a heart transplant and another because his wife was pregnant. I got my first one in January 1995 - combining a life as an auditor and a councillor made it essential to keep it in touch. It was twice the length of my current one, probably four times the depth, and the batteries lasted ten hours on standby. You could store ten numbers in memory - no names - and you could make and receive voice calls.
In early 1998 I bought my first home PC and was connected to the internet. This involved pay-by-minute dial up on a modem at about 28kbps.
Today, I have spent a long time making voice calls to sort out a) the fact that my ADSL connection was not working (work at the exchange) and lamenting the slowness of 46kbps dial up, and, eventually, getting my mobile phone (with which I can surf a limited part of the www) to email a photograph to my home PC. The send email takes minutes - a long time. With ADSL back working, receive is instant.
The photo quality is not great but it will be useful for docu-snapshots when it is not sensible to get full camera out of rucksack. I was warned about the resolution quality, anyway!
If I look back on this in five years time, I wonder what technological changes will have happened to phones, cameras, PCs and the internet.
