Pagers

[Cobra!]

So I stumbled across a video of someone who bought a pager in 2019 and signed up for a service to recieve pages, and letting people send him pages through his website.

I was aware of pagers existing before this video, but this video has piqued a wee internet in them.

For those unaware, in the 1990s, before texting became a thing, people sent messages to each-other through "pages", which are messages sent to dedicated devices, most of them receive-only.

There do exist pagers that can send pages and even emails, like this one.

These devices do have advantages over mobile phone texting, such as the ability to keep them on during flights as they don't transmit, just receive, and it's impossible to get your location from them, as towers that send pages just send them everywhere, hoping your device is in the radius.

Though of course mobile phones became more sophisticated, and the ability to text rendered pagers mostly obsolete, and nowadays is mostly only used in medical and emergency services.

Personally, I think it'd be pretty cool to have one, but I don't have a use for it. If I can somehow connect one to my phone and have the phone forward texts to the pagers, than I'd definitely get one, but as it stands, it's apparently next to impossible to even manually change carriers they use, let alone do anything else, but they still seem pretty cool.

So have any of you ever used a pager, what do you think of them? Should they make some sort of comeback?

[Melooon]

I have a weird memory that my dad might have had a non-functional one I used to play with... but it was one of the really simple ones that just had a blinking light and a sound; there was no screen - the idea was your office would make it beep if you were needed and then you'd call your secretary to find out what the message was.

As far as I know, many hospitals still use them for calling in staff when they are needed! I looked up if I can get one where I live and it seems like they might not exist here anymore. That said  even if they are still here, I've always been under the impression they are really expensive because they are so specialized   

What I did find a lot of was local area ones that you self-host - you get a bunch of pagers and a lil server that broadcasts to them. I think it's for large industrials sites that might need to alert staff, but it could be fun if a group of friends had them 

[Cobra!]

What I did find a lot of was local area ones that you self-host - you get a bunch of pagers and a lil server that broadcasts to them. I think it's for large industrials sites that might need to alert staff, but it could be fun if a group of friends had them 

Oh, I think I saw that. It was made for amateur radio, right?

[kandeez]

As a kid my dad had one and let me play with it. I always questioned why it was different than a phone (flip phones) and usually just got a "this is before that" answer. I think if they were to make a comeback they'd be used quite frequently because who really calls nowadays anyway, but also the lack of need for touch screen and app integration on them is probably enough to keep them obsolete.

I can't speak for pagers specifically but I brought an old flip phone to my carrier and asked if they could put a number on it recently and even though it was through the same carrier they couldn't. I'd assume pagers would be even harder to transfer over. Maybe if you like the concept of a tiny device people can get in touch with you on and are willing to use modern tech, you could look into phone adjacent accessories. My dad has this tiny phone called the palm and it connects to his number and everything but really all it seems to do is get text messages and maybe send them. I don't know all the details but I'm sure there's some device to connect to your phone or some kids phone that is a reimagined pager and just branded as something different.

[Cobra!]

I found an article/tutorial on how to resurrect old pagers to work with modern devices!

Maybe if you like the concept of a tiny device people can get in touch with you on and are willing to use modern tech, you could look into phone adjacent accessories. My dad has this tiny phone called the palm and it connects to his number and everything but really all it seems to do is get text messages and maybe send them. I don't know all the details but I'm sure there's some device to connect to your phone or some kids phone that is a reimagined pager and just branded as something different.

It’s an option for sure. Not sure where to start looking, though.

[Melooon]

This video seems to show the very first pager being demo'd in 1962!