Rearview Muse: Origin of the Car Phone

I was minding my own business watching a movie a few weeks ago when the hero walked over to a car and picked up a phone. No big deal, right? But this time I paused the movie and thought out loud, “Wait a minute. This is from 1963. There were car phones in 1963?”

Turns out they’ve been around long before 1963. Who knew?

Watch the video below to see James Bond dutifully answering MI6’s call on the 1935 Drophead 3.5 Litre Bentley Mark IV’s car phone at the 0:48 mark.

My curious nature and love of research wouldn’t let me finish the movie. I had to know when car phones first appeared. The resulting research was a strange trip and revealed many different opinions, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of finding the answers. Ready for the rundown? Buckle up!

Techwalla.com states “in 1910, an engineer from Stockholm Sweden named Lars Magnus Ericsson installed a telephone in his car. As he drove around the country, Ericsson would connect his phone with a pair of long electrical wires into the telephone poles installed along the road. While this was the first car phone, the concept did not take off in popularity.”

According to Smithsonian Magazine’s website, “an article in the March 21, 1920 Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio retold the story of a man in Philadelphia named W. W. Macfarlane who was experimenting with his own ‘wireless telephone.’ With a chauffeur driving him as he sat in the back seat of his moving car he amazed a reporter from The Electrical Experimenter magazine by talking to Mrs. Macfarlane, who sat in their garage 500 yards down the road.”

The Telephone Museum, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, cites Sept. 11, 1946, as the date of the first mobile long-distance car-to-car telephone conversation. The museum’s website says “Alton Dickieson and D. Mitchell from Bell Labs, along with future AT&T CEO H.I. Romnes, were part of a team that worked more than a decade to create what they termed a ‘primitive wireless network’ capable of transmitting phone calls. Initially just a huge “party line” (subscribers had to listen for someone to be on the line before placing a call), the network was used sparingly, as it could not handle large volumes. It was also much less than ‘mobile,’ as the required equipment weighed in at 80 pounds.”

Techwalla.com goes on to say “advancements in technology in the 1940s and 1950s led to the development of cell towers that could receive signals in three hexagonal directions. This led to the first car phones being installed in limousines and other commercial vehicles. This new technology stunned the American public when it appeared in the 1954 Humphrey Bogart movie ‘Sabrina.”’

Then you have more technological advances, namely, the hand-held cell phone, that came along and pretty much rendered the car-specific phone obsolete.

According to CNN’s website, “on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper stood on a sidewalk on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan with a device the size of a brick and made the first public call from a cell phone to one of the men he’d been competing with to develop the device.

‘I’m calling you on a cell phone, but a real cell phone, a personal, handheld, portable cell phone,’ Cooper, then an engineer at Motorola, said on the phone to Joel Engel, head of AT&T-owned Bell Labs.”

And then came the Nokia ringtone, “Hello Moto,” the flip phone, Apple, etc …

1935 Drophead 3.5 Litre Bentley Mark IV

Speaking of the 1935 Drophead 3.5 Litre Bentley Mark IV, Bond answered the phone from the car in 1963’s“From Russia With Love,” but he never actually drove the vehicle in the film.

Here’s some history for you: The Mark IV came about as a result of the acquisition of Bentley by Rolls-Royce in 1931. Rolls-Royce wanted to beef up the output of their 20/25 HP to offer drivers a sportier, more powerful car. As a result, the Bentley Bentley received a cross-flow cylinder head and a 3.5-liter engine in the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby, England. The engine featured a higher compression ratio than that of the Rolls and boasted a top speed of around 95 miles per hour.

The Mark IV’s 224-cubic inch engine was paired with a 4-speed manual transmission to provide power to the rear wheels. There were 1,191 3.5 Litre Mark IVs produced from 1934 to 1936. It was replaced by the 4.5 Litre in 1937.

The Mark IV doesn’t strike Bond fans as a particularly Bond-like vehicle. It boasted only one gadget – the aforementioned dash-mounted car phone – to wow movie-goers with. But as you read above, that was something else. Heck, it was 1963, after all.

The Mark IV had very little screen time in “From Russia With Love,” and even less in “Goldfinger.” In that 1964 release, Bond asks Q where the Bentley is, and is told “It’s had its day, I’m afraid.” MI6 issues Bond the Aston Martin DB5 to replace the Mark IV.

Rolex Submariner: Reference 6538

Often referred to as the “James Bond Rolex,” the Submariner was made from 1954 to 1959 and was produced with divers and water enthusiasts in mind. The Submariner 6538 features an oversized crown, no crown guards and its 38 mm tonneau-shaped Oyster case features a screw back and large screw-down crown. The water-resistant case is good down to 1,000 feet.

If you’re looking to pick up a Submariner 6538, be aware that they can be pricey. One particularly rare version brought more than half a million dollars at auction in 2013. So, yeah.

See and read more about the Rolex Submariner: Reference 6538 here.

Custom Car or Truck Digital Watercolor Prints

So I’ve mixed my love of automobiles and my more than 30 years of award-winning graphic design and fine art experience to create these beautiful custom digital watercolor prints. The prints are crafted from your high-resolution photos in Adobe Photoshop and the Adobe Creative Suite using a Lenovo Active Pen 2 on my canvas – a Lenovo convertible laptop. Color accuracy is ensured during final proofing on 21-inch external monitors in my studio. These prints make unique gifts or mementos to be cherished and will no doubt be a conversation piece. Order on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/RearviewMuse.