Tomorrow's World: Mobile Phone 13 September 1979 - BBC

.... 'course there'll never be another programme like TM, .. everything 's been invented!

We should have stayed in 1979

What will they think of next?

Did they end up using rhe frequencies or did they chose something else in the end?

Watching a man with a phone with a cord going into a giant walkie-talkie on my smartphone, which is smaller than the receiver 📞 he's holding and is infinity more useful. How wrong they were at how things would turn out! These days calling someone on your smartphone is more like using the phone as if it were just an app amd not the primary function of the smartphone. And 3 minutes for a call? That never happened as we all now have unlimted talk (amd text)

Worst invention in history...mobile phones

LD dialling over a virtual wireless circuit? Bollocks

Sounds more like a walkie talkie by the way I hear a tail squelch.

I need this in my life. Not a modern mobile phone, this. This is PEAK

Alan Partridge demonstrating a mobile phone in 1979 amazing!

Now look at us a species of dumb, zombies dependant on mobile phones!

Worst invention ever

my first "car phone" was an under the seat base and a corded headset. mine was ahead of its time. it had buttons.
1992 or 93.

A rotary cell phone, with a cord.

Im impressed, but whats the camera like!

15 years later the government was kicking themselves for not buying on the shares for this revolution, one up for the people.

A "walkabout" phone. I wonder if the Australian First Nation people them.

Watching this on a phone is really strange

Nice piece of film of early mobile phone developement ,very true about who would make use of the technology ,our competitors abroad thats what happened,i live in chelmsford it was so nice to see places
from 1979 ,chelmer institute ,which is now a new housing developement sadly, and lovely danbury park happy memories ❤

What. Do. Think. This. Is. Bloody. Star trek

O was 19 in 1979 and I remember thinking, who the hell would want to carry a phone around with them, on call 24/7, screw that, I still feel the same way, I leave my phone at home often, what am I a machine on call constantly, no thanks, I never liked phones anyway.

This set is much more interesting than my ordinary black rectangle. That VU meter design is work of art IMHO.

Brilliant 🙃👏👌

A VR headset would've made this chap shit his britches 😂

England was so advanced in Technology before mass imigration from Africa and India.

MOBILE PHONES WILL NEVER CATCH ON ALL JUST A FAD !

I run a company... All workers are All younger, Impulsive, Entitled, Child men... All in Construction. People ask me, "How do you do it, you are so Patient & cool under pressure."
Well... Back then to dial a phone number on a rotary dial phone-like the one in the vid-took 2 seconds to dial each number... 20 seconds.... Today you press a button & automatically make the call... Thank God I know Patience....

That is lovely how enthusiastic this gentleman gets "just" by having the possibility to phone while on the go. Something that is considered today even less than a commodity. I, for myself prefer texting, and other means over calling and talking. If he would only know back then, how the expectations would change eventually.

Love there accent, where and when did that disappear and get replaced with chav speak ?

In 79 I was saving up for a Sony Trinitron TV and a Betamax VCR

He talks like Alan Partridge!

The Post Office and Home Office were not impressed. Guess the UK never received Mobile Phones

I'm Alan Partridge, AH-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

You know the 3 blind men and 5he elephant?

Hogwash! This is like Star Trek technology that is still 3 century away. We will never get this type of phone in our lifetime. Just pure science fiction.

there were mobile phones all the way back in the 40s

FAB :)

Should have bellowed 'HALLO... (pause) I'M ON A TRAIN' that would have been quite Joly

imagine how they would react to mobile phones of today

I used to love this Programme. Looking at future possible Gadgets
They achieved it somewhat – the only thing is we don’t dial our smart phones.
Today almost everyone was a Mobile (Cell) Phone. How did we cope without them?

It'll never catch on.

It’s an interesting report, but that tech is remarkably old fashioned even for 1979. It looks more like something from the 1950s.

I don’t know why a mobile phone at that stage would even be attempting to transmit rotary pulse dialling over radio. Multi-frequency tones (similar to touch tone) had been in use in telephone networks since at least the 1950s. They were developed originally to transmit dialling and routing instructions signalling been switching equipment (exchanges) over microwave links. There were even touch tone home and office phones in use more than a decade before that report.

Also I don’t know why he keeps saying “digital” when it was clearly very analogue and that term was certainly understood in the late 70s in much same way as we understand it now. Digital communications was being widely discussed and beginning to be rolled out (particularly digital switching) and that certainly wasn’t digital tech!

It looks like it’s was a very simple radio link to a very old version of the electromechanical PSTN. Even the dialling tone is from the pre-digital and even pre-electronic era!

There were far more advanced mobile systems in development at that stage. NMT opened in Scandinavia in 1981 using first generation analogue mobile systems and digital switching. Bell Labs and Motorola launched AMPS in 1983 and the UK ultimately used a variant of that called TACS, same radio technology with a different frequency plan and Ericsson AXE digital switching, a few years later in 1983/84.

Over and out :)

Not to be rude but people in the past were idiots. Why didn't they just buy better cellphones? The mechanical dial alone is ridiculous, they look like morons.

I wish today's world was canceled instead of Tomorrow's( yesterday's) World

I can't see this catching on.

hmm would be a good exercise to send text messages

I remember the days when if you wanted a phone in the UK, you had to wait weeks until Telecom or whatever they were called at the time got their finger out and installed a line. Now I can buy a mobile from Tesco and be on line in mins. You can keep the old days!

Mobile phone 13 is now iphone 13 lol