The small plastic box that beeped and flashed numbers was a lifeline to Laurie Dove in 1993. Pregnant with her first baby in a house beyond any town in rural...
The small plastic box that beeped and flashed numbers was a lifeline to Laurie Dove in 1993. Pregnant with her first baby in a house beyond any town in rural Kansas, Dove used the little black device to keep in touch with her husband as he delivered medical supplies. He carried one, too. They had a code.
Then as now — albeit in far smaller numbers — pagers are used precisely because they are old school. They run on batteries and radio waves, making them impervious to dead zones without WiFi, basements without cell service, hackings and catastrophic network collapses such as those during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
By the 1980s, millions of Americans used pagers, according to reports at the time. The devices were status symbols — belt-clipped signals that a wearer was important enough to be, in effect, on call at a moment's notice. Doctors, lawyers, movie stars and journalists wore them through the 1990s. In 1989, Sir Mix-a-Lot wrote a song about them, rapping: “Beep diddy beep, will I call you maybe.”
Dove, who went on to serve as the mayor of Valley Center, Kansas, and become an author, says she and her family use cell phones now. But that means accepting the risk of identity theft. In some ways, she fondly recalls the simplicity of pagers.The pager market today is small but persistent Tuesday’s attack appeared to be a complex Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah. But the widespread use of pagers in Lebanon meant the detonations cost an enormous number of civilian casualties. They exploded in a moment across the landscape of everyday life — including homes, cars, grocery stores and cafes.
Peabody said he and others at the hospital tested a new system and “the pager won": The doctors stopped answering the two-way text messages and would only respond to pagers.
Cell Phones Laurie Dove Christopher Peabody Hezbollah Israel Vincent Kelly
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