TECHNOFILE
Where did that tech come from ?
Did you know that during the last two years , technology has advanced around seven years ? Here , Tim Stackpool steps back in time to enlighten you on the ancient beginnings of everyday EA tech
The smartphone While the modern smartphone is in fact a mobile computer , small enough to carry in your hand , the original mobile ‘ cell ’ phone was a bulky ‘ brick ’. It had no screen , very limited battery life and was concerned only with transmitting voice . Motorola ’ s DynaTAC phone was designed by Martin Cooper and launched way back in 1973 . Later that year , he introduced it at a press conference in New York City . Beforehand , to make sure it worked , he placed the first ever public cell phone call to engineer Joel Engel , head of AT & T ’ s rival project – and gloated that he was calling from a portable cellular phone . That tech is the fusion of two other systems , already well developed at the time . Regular telephone infrastructure dates back to Alexander Graham Bell , a Scottish-born inventor credited with inventing and patenting the first practical telephone in 1876 . The wireless aspect might well be credited to Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi who developed the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph and , in 1901 , broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal .
Credit is also due to the developers of the BlackBerry . Canadian company Research In Motion originally produced two-way pagers in 1996 but became known for its handy phone with a built-in keyboard , popular due to an early emphasis on access to email . BlackBerry was once one of the world ’ s most prominent smartphone brands , specialising in secure communications and mobile productivity . At its peak in 2013 , it had 85 million subscribers worldwide .
THE EXPERT
Tech expert Tim is the technology writer for Executive PA Media . He can be heard on talk radio in Australia and is a tech presenter who speaks at conferences and trade shows about technology ’ s impact on work and lifestyle .
Microsoft Word In the early 1970s , word processing slowly progressed from glorified typewriters augmented with electronic features . They were becoming fully computer-based – although only with single-purpose hardware – and the first word processing systems allowed display and editing of documents on a video screen . By the 80s , the system by Wang Laboratories ( which was a true office machine , affordable , easily mastered and operated by ‘ secretarial staff ’ rather than by computer specialists ) had become very popular . Earlier computerised versions were often expensive and hard to use .
The first word processing program for personal computers was Electric Pencil , which went on sale in 1976 . In 1978 WordStar appeared and , because of its many new features , it soon dominated the market . WordPerfect then replaced it , just before the launch of Microsoft Windows in around 1985 . After this the Microsoft Multi- Tool Word not only became the ubiquitous word processor of choice but also evolved into the desktop publishing mainstay you recognise today .
Zoom meetings A mere fledging in video conferencing back in 2019 , Zoom has come into its own due to the pandemic . Video conferencing was actually possible back in the 1970s using expensive satellites and existed as an early form of digital communication ( ISDN ) in the 1980s .
But it was the 2005 emergence of Skype – a voice-only service at the time – to rival standard telephones that eventually led to video conferencing in 2008 . First developed in Estonia , Skype was soon sold to Ebay , hoping to promote it as a service for buyers and sellers to communicate . That goal unrealised , Ebay offloaded Skype to Microsoft in 2011 . Today , its foundations are found within Microsoft Teams although it does still exist – for now – as a standalone product . It ’ s rivalled , of course , by Zoom , Facetime , Google Meet , WhatsApp , Viber , WebEx and others .
Funnily enough , when Zoom was first established in 2011 , the company had trouble finding investors because many people thought the videotelephony market was already saturated . Today , counting both free and paying users , Zoom has 300 million daily meeting participants . S
30 Executive PA | Autumn Issue 2022