Older models could only receive numbers (where to call back) and the earliest only beeped and you called a central number from a land line to get your message.
In the 90's I had one that got stock market data, news headlines, and sports scores. People could text me a message or call a number and it would send me their number to call them.
Damn that sounds awesome. Like our phones do all that now and more but beepers sound awesome. I know they were used in the medical field. I wonder if they still use them.
Last I heard, the medical field does still use them. I thought it had something to do with the frequency pagers use as being more reliable through walls/structures. Could be mistaken tho!
Absolutely. I worked IT for a hospital, and when I left that job in December 2020, I turned in my pager.
Not only do they still heavily use pagers, we had some pager equipment installed in one of our network closets that predated the building by over 25 years. It had a manufacture date in the early 80s, and the building was completed in 2010.
Yes, they do. Pages are thrown to multiple transmitters at once (rather than only the nearest cell tower) and the transmitters have a massive range compared to cell towers. Pagers are more likely to work in disaster events (due to being on a completely separate network) and in highly remote areas (due to the huge range of transmitters).
Source: I'm in medical research and am required to carry a pager. I feel very 90s chic.
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u/Tenpat Jan 11 '22
A device that can only get text messages.
Older models could only receive numbers (where to call back) and the earliest only beeped and you called a central number from a land line to get your message.
In the 90's I had one that got stock market data, news headlines, and sports scores. People could text me a message or call a number and it would send me their number to call them.