Watching me an episode of Perry Mason. Bored outta my gourd.
What? Perry and Paul driving down some street. (Obviously faked, same building passed by 3 times)
And I hear a buzz. Paul picks up an old fashioned landline headset. Makes a few comments and turns to tell Perry they have to go back to the law office. U-turn. Same building in the background.
First: car telephone? Now how does that possibly work?
Second: phone use while driving, and smoking a cigarette and talking to Perry. How’s about that for distracted driving?
Third: Don’t they think us bored viewers can see the background flying by and determine when the same building is shown?
Car phones (which were a different technology from cellular phones) were introduced in 1946. They used special radio frequencies to connect the car’s phone to the phone system, but had a limited number of frequencies (meaning that a limited number of users could make calls at the same time), and were only useful in those areas where the phone company had installed antennas.
I wasn’t around in The 1960s (well I was right at the end but in the other side of the world where any phones were a rarity)
But I’m constantly amazed by folks even of my age who seem to think that mobile telephony was invented in the 1990s.
My boss had a car phone in the 1980s. The bills were $200-$300 a month. And that was with him making most of his calls on the road either from a pay phone or from a clients office. The car phone was for really urgent unplanned things. Like he was running late either for an important meeting or for a tee-time (which were often important meetings)
He not only used the phone while driving, and smoked while driving, he drove a lot when he would be well over the limit for BAC. He’d fire you if you complained about any of these things.
Having seen most (if not all) episodes of the original series, I was under the impression Paul just hired operatives and let them do all the work while he dropped into Perry’s office for coffee.
Heck, Perry Mason was a Perry-come-lately to car telephones. In The Adventures of Superman, Perry White had one in the episode “The Evil Three,” broadcast in 1953.
Also from the black and white era, Peter Gunn had a car telephone.
In the second Bond film, 1963’s From Russia With Love, bond has a phone in his personal car.
(It was a 3 1/2 liter Bentley. In the books, Bond drove sports cars, but they were 1930s vintage sports cars.)
Didn’t Steed and Emma Peel have phones in their cars?
UNCLE agents didn’t need them; they had satellite radios. “Open Channel D!”
Remember SEARCH? World Securities agents had miniature TV cameras in their tie tacks and other jewelry that worked everywhere, but I could never understand why they were reduced to using Morse code with their dental contacts.
