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The evening current events show As it Happens on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports that American engineer Justine Haupt is the creator of a rotary-dial mobile phone.
Listen to the full 5m39s radio interview or read a shortened transcript on-line.
Justine Haupt, who created her own cellphone with a rotary dial, said she did so because she doesn't like how hyper-connected people have become in the world of smartphones.
"You can't browse the internet, it can't text, and all of that is intentional because I have a problem with how hyper-connected everyone is nowadays.
[...]Haupt, a 34-year-old space engineer, explains that although the phone operates on a 3G cellular network, it is not a smartphone.
"It's as un-smart as it can be, intentionally."
Haupt aims to use the phone on a daily basis and tried to make it as compact as possible, so it could fit in a pocket.
The phone does integrate some modern features, such as programmable shortcut buttons for calling specific numbers, a power switch, and a curved e-paper screen that displays basic information such as missed calls.
Though only briefly mentioned in the interview, the phone incorporates open source hardware from Adafruit Industries.
Full project description and documentation can be found on Haupt's webpage: http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/index.html
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Monday February 17 2020, @03:50AM (5 children)
I got a really cool tech support story regarding one of those. An old friend of mine was doing "IT" work during this time, if you call working on those switches Internet anything :)
Problem was a gentleman in Los Angeles trying to reach his mother every night. It was important that he do it, and he did it every day, and roughly the same time. Within minutes. A very punctual individual. This resulted in a very reproducible error developing whereby the gentleman dialed his mother, but was connected to some other house. It was regular, repeatable, and bizarre. Nobody was understanding it for weeks till my friend overheard the problem.
My friend asked one question: "Does it hit the same number every time it makes a mistake?" Answer: "YES! How did you know that!"
He told them to go the building for the mother's switch, go to a specific rotary switch on a panel, take out your screwdriver pen, gently twist a few degrees. That's it. The heat from hot afternoons was expanding the metal in the rotary switch, just enough, that while at a certain temperature it was overshooting enough and sliding into the number just above it. Like clockwork, for weeks once the summer started, but only for the small time window in which this man called his mother.
It was quite a Sherlock moment in the office on that afternoon :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:04AM (3 children)
Engaging pedantry subroutine...
IT is short for Information Technology, not Internet Technology. As such, using IT to describe such stuff is absolutely apropos.
Returning success code...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM
Possible, but unlikely, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Information+Technology&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CInformation%20Technology%3B%2Cc0 [google.com]
Information Technology didn't come into use until ~1960, if this can be believed.
More likely the clever person was a phone repair guy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:22AM
Not so, it will be CT, Communications Technology.
If only it was a thing... :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology [wikipedia.org]
CYA
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:20AM
Engaging power circuit shutoff...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM
Switching offices in Florida were air conditioned - heavily.
🌻🌻 [google.com]