The pager: smartphone ancestor still in use today
PARIS — The pager was the first compact mobile communication tool to appear on the mass market and although smartphones have largely pushed it out, some people still use the reliable technology today.
Pagers were in the spotlight on Tuesday after hundreds of the devices used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon exploded simultaneously across the country in a first-of-its-kind attack that the militant group blamed on Israel.
Pagers are small boxes that allow a user to receive messages and sound alerts.
They use their own frequency and are therefore considered more reliable as they bypass mobile telephone networks, which can experience interruptions, connection problems or interception of communications.
These features were among the reasons Hezbollah was using them — after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas sparked the war in Gaza, the militant group told its members to stop using mobile phones to prevent any Israeli breaches of the technology.
Pagers had their heyday in the West in the 80s and 90s — 61 million pagers were in circulation worldwide in 1994, according to US-based pager manufacturer Spok.
But although smartphones have largely taken over the mass market, pagers continue to be used in some sectors, like hospitals, particularly in the United States.
According to a study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine published in 2017, nearly 80 percent of hospital doctors surveyed used pagers and half of the messages received through them were related to patient care.
Pagers are also used in less savory fields in the criminal world, like drug trafficking.
The US pager maker Spok advertises its product as a tool “whose signal penetrates steel and metal, while that of a smartphone could be blocked”.
Another manufacturer, Discover Systems, says that “Pager systems represent a more reliable means of communication, for example in the event of a Wi-Fi or telephone network failure.”
According to Spok, the first pager was patented in the United States in 1949 by inventor Alfred Gross, a pioneer in wireless communication, before being used in a New York hospital.
The term “pager” was officially registered in 1959 by the Motorola company, which was a market leader for several decades.
Motorola’s first pager, the Pageboy 1 created in 1964, allowed an audible alert to be sent by telephone before the technology was perfected and allowed, from the 80s, to send written messages.
