Phone Rage, 1920
By Frank Jonientz
Are you reading this on your smartphone? Are you surfing the web while you read this? Has your phone ever started “ringing” at an inappropriate time or place? Can you find a place to charge the battery?
If these questions seem unremarkable (ho-hum) to you then the cell phone/mobile phone/smart phone has probably been a part of your life for as long as you can remember. Children of the “Analog Age” may remember when the true cellular phone first appeared (1973, the same year Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in “The Battle of the Sexes”) looking like a bulky, expensive novelty. Today almost everyone takes the cell phone for granted.
You might ask “I wonder if anyone from the ‘olden days’ could have imagined this?” Apparently, at least one person did. In the Bridgeport Times of February 21, 1920, an uncredited writer imagined a world where
Sound familiar? Our anonymous oracle continues…
Horros? Even visionaries make spelling errors.
But our ink-stained prophet can even imagine how this technology will increase productivity…
The full article is posted below. This page and thousands of other pages from the Norwich Bulletin and the Bridgeport Evening Farmer/Bridgeport Times are being uploaded in increments to the historic newspaper database of the Library of Congress named Chronicling America. By the summer of 2015, researchers will be able to find there the complete run from 1909-1922.
