I got my pager at 18 (no one cool called it a beeper, this was when 'cool' was still a thing), and yes, my weed dealer had one, and knew my beeper code (it was a beeper code but you sent it to a pager, young people just do this). Beeper code is worth explaining: you'd send a number to be called back at, and there was room for more digits, so everyone had a three-digit number which was theirs, and you just kinda had to know it. Which could be tricky, so there would be conversations like "ok who is <three digit number>" "oh thats <friend>" "ah right". This let you page people from places which weren't your home.
The whole thing sort of worked, but we were happy to ditch it for cell phones when they became affordable.
I miss having a pager in the 90s and early 2ks. I basically could go anywhere I wanted, or be on the internet when my parents weren't home, and all they had to do was page me and I'd know I either needed to come home, call them ASAP or call them immediately.
I still remember the number too but don't remember a few of my phone numbers.
I wouldn’t expect a modern pager to operate on the same technology as older pager. Pagers are a thing and they have there uses. I’ve heard of a physical pager being used to symbolize who is “on call”, and a team of engineers will pass the pager between themselves. I’ve seen restaurants pass out pagers to people waiting for tables. I’ve heard talk about some medical/emergency personal still using pagers.
I imagine pagers are probably used in highly secure communications (military, statecraft), because the thing being paged doesn’t have to give away it’s location, or even the fact that it received the message.
I worked for a company that used PagerDuty, but eventually moved to a service that provided actual physical pagers. Well, they looked like 1990s pagers, but connected to Wifi. Really cool. Not sure why more don't do this.
This reminds me of the 90s - but not just from the looks.
There was a time in the mid 90s in Chicago ( maybe most cities? ) when pagers were the thing, and a pager would come with a free voicemail box. The pager companies would set the voicemail pin to the last 4 digits of the pager number. The customer was meant to change it when they first signed up for their account.
And so I knew quite a few people who would test numbers all day and night to steal voicemail numbers and then use them for all sorts of things.
Promoting raves and other parties
Party lines
Message boards
Various things involving graffiti.
It was a normal thing back then to find a local pay phone and call a couple known voicemail boxes for figure out what to do that weekend or to see where friends were going to be.
Are there any pager networks left in the US? I've always been interested in them out of historical curiosity because I was too young to use them when they were actually a thing, but from what I understood, pagers are pretty much not a thing anymore.
Well I'm 28 years old i never used pagers. What made it stick except being a huge target? EDIT: Being a huge target does not sound as a best explanation to me.
I am from India, & I still remember back in 1998, my uncle had a motorola pager http://goo.gl/Ziuy34.
When i held the pager, it was cute & fun little device.
If we think of communication back in the 90s, I wish the present would be same as the 90s. :)
Call the operator;say your message;& wait for the person to call you.
How prevalent were pagers in your area? I was a college student with one in the late 90s. There was a Mountain Dew promotion that gave you a pager and a year's service for X number of proofs-of-purchase, which was easy to get if you just went to a gas station and asked if you could dig through the boxes, but I didn't know anyone else who had one. Crucial item for certain fields (first responders, healthcare, IT, drug dealers), but for an average person?
I don't miss carrying a pager, but the alphanumeric ones we had when I was a resident physician were pretty cool. Need to send a one-way message? They had a web interface, so you could. One or two months of service on a single AA battery. Worked everywhere. Far more than I can say for smartphones.
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