Santorum: ‘People 20 years ago couldn’t conceive of a cell phone’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/02/santorum-people-20-years-ago-couldnt-conceive-of-a-cell-phone/Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn’t even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans “recognize the rights God has given every person.”
Speaking to supporters in Chillicothe, Ohio on Friday, the former Pennsylvania senator explained that the U.S. had “transformed the world” with the a new form of government.
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Ricky there is no shame in admitting you need Psychological help.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The world's first commercial automated cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo... The first 1G network launched in the USA was Chicago-based Ameritech in 1983 using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone.
That would have been 28 years ago. 32 if you concede that Japanese count as "people".
20 years ago I had a cell phone. And I am basically an atheist. 
Those are the exact three samples I thought of... Wrist Radio, Communicator and Shoe Phone. And there are plenty more in the Sci-Fi world.
I guess that whole science thing goes right over his head 
They were selling these cell phones everywhere in 1983.
Wall street 1987
gawd should drop a brain on little pRicky. 
at least 26-27 years ago.
Whoops. I stand corrected.
And he also believes in evolution.
If I'm not mistaken -- it may have been a year or two before or a year or two after, but it was right around that time.
There were a few car phone services at the time (St. Louis was the first city to get automobile phone service in 1946) that basically used two-way radio technology and then an operator would patch the call into the phone system. But frequency restrictions severely limited the number of possible subscribers. They found a solution at Bell Labs in 1948 or so, but Ma Bell didn't invest the resources to fully develop it (they believed they could pressure the government for more frequencies, thus solving the problem). When cell phone technology started to develop in earnest in the 1970s, they used the same basic idea from Bell Labs in the '40s. (Can't remember the name of the guy who came up with the solution, alas.)
Anyway, kind of interesting. Cell phone (and the car phone) have a much longer history than most folks realize. Certainly more than 20 years
Like others here, I have memories of people having cell phones in the late 80's. In fact, we used to play adult softball in the summer (ETA: I was not an adult, but a teen at the time. I just played b/c they always needed girls and my parents played), and it got really annoying with all of the business/sales guys having their cell phones hooked up to their horn so they could hear their business calls during the games. Some truck would go off honking and someone would come in running off the field to answer their phone. Back then I think they had to be almost constantly charged so the guys had to keep them in their trucks. Or maybe it was sat phones? I'm not sure - but it's not like cell phones were 'inconceivable'. Heck, our school even had the internet 20 years ago.
Just another instance of history being re-written.
Funny how a cell phone is a god-given right, but birth control is the devil. How do they know the difference when a new innovative product comes on the market? Who does God tell?
This guy is a complete idiot.Here is a cell phone from 1992. Does he not realize cell phones were invented by zombie Jesus in the fuckin 80s?
santorum - - - not his finest work.
I do believe that religion has made little pRicky batshit crazy.
