Cellphones

Many call it digital imprisonment today. A family will be at table for dinner, everyone will be pinging away. In places of worship, buses, trains, meetings, interactions among individuals have reduced. People are busy with their telephones.

These were predicted 67 years ago (11 April, 1953) by Mark R. Sullivan, San Francisco President and director of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph company.

As published in The Tacoma News of 11 April, 1953:

In Sullivan’s words, “Just what form the future telephone will take is of course, mere speculation.

However, he predicted: “In its final development, telephone will be carried out by the individual, perhaps as we carry the watch today. It will probably require no dial or equivalent and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want as they talk.

“Who knows what it may actually translate from one language to the  another!”

How true! In contemporary times, the old telephone has been replaced with mobile devices. People now do video calls on Facebook, Whatsapp, hold meetings via zoom. There also devices on the mobile devices which help tourists to communicate in foreign lands.

It was like when Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Italian artist, predicted the flying machine (now aircraft). As quoted in lifescience.com, “Da Vinci’s designs featured a pair of enormous wings connected to a wooden frame, inside of which an intrepid pilot could lie facedown and move the wings up and down by turning a crank that moved a series of rods and pulleys.”

See the newspaper below:

The newspaper. Photo credit: Wale Ojo Lanre