We got an old-fashioned item today: a phone book. I think it was Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and another name I just found, Ronald Wayne, t.ly/iwfnn who managed to severely restrict phone books and their usefulness. Across this very large country, it took a while to string lines and create the company I heard about as a kid: "AT&T". The American Telephone and Telegraph Company spread across America and stimulated other nations. The telegraph and the telephone each have interesting stories and backgrounds. Being able to communicate almost instantly from California to New York at first seemed impossible and now we take it for granted.
Years later, the Apple Computer Company came along. There were predecessors, as there usually are. Apple already had small computers that were far more portable than the cabinets of disc drives. But iPods, pocket sized audio players that could hold unusually large numbers of musical compositions, morphed, in the cellphone age, into really portable individual phones. Excellent design sparked today's scenes of groups of people all looking at their "smartphone" pocket-sized computers.
Current scripts of movies and television shows make much use of the abrupt phone call. Our gorgeous heroine is driving along when her own phone rings. She has a modern interface in the car that allows her to answer the phone without taking her eyes off the road. Her caller has wonderful news or terrible news and the message rocks the storyline.
Lynn is back from Florida so I cannot easily blunder into her life with another phone call. More than once, I managed to call just as she was pulling up to tollbooths and parking lot gates, asking for her precious attention at just the moment when she was trying to retrieve a ticket for the lot or admission. My grandfather never made such ill-timed interruptions.
