Relics of a Bygone Era: A Journalist's Recollections of Analog Communication

Tangled and grey, a collection of peculiar devices recently discovered in a loft drawer prompted a wave of memories for journalist Peter Hitchens. These items, once the pinnacle of global technology, represent a past era of communication that contrasts sharply with today's digital landscape.

For years, Hitchens, working in the newspaper trade, was plagued by the anxiety of obtaining the world's greatest stories only to be hampered by the lack of a functional telephone to transmit them. This fear was particularly potent in the remote locations he often ventured into. The unearthed relics include adaptors that once enabled him to connect his computer to phone networks, facilitating communication from as far afield as Siberia and Caracas.

During his time in the Soviet Union, Hitchens became adept at telephone engineering, managing to connect his British phone to the Soviet telecommunications network, along with his fax and answering machine. He recalls the process of listening to messages left on his machine in Moscow by pressing a special device against the mouthpiece, a feat he accomplished even from remote regions like Kazakhstan. He humorously noted how the KGB, presumed to be always listening, must have envied his advanced equipment.

Hitchens also utilized 'Packet Switching,' a method that allowed a small laptop to connect to his newspaper's main computer in London via aging copper-wire phone lines. This allowed him to send text messages long before the technology became widespread. Earlier still, he relied on a cruder device known as a Tandy, which transmitted signals to London through rubber cups placed over a telephone receiver. This method was not always reliable and once led to a painful nerve injury due to the machine's constant weight on his shoulder.

The journalist notes the obsolescence of these tools, reflecting on how his own landline phone is now defunct and how recent hotel stays offered no phones in rooms, requiring guests to use apps. He recounts an attempt to thank his bike shop via a QR code, which resulted in his internet access being blocked.

Hitchens anticipates that current technologies like apps and QR codes, and possibly WiFi, will similarly fade into obsolescence. He reminisces about past skills, such as making calls from broken phone boxes, disabling phones, reversing charges in multiple languages, and navigating international calls from Paris cafes. He also recalls bypassing lengthy operator waits by routing calls through Helsinki. He even mentions the possibility of using a 'booster' to amplify weak foreign phone signals, or a 'mutter-box' whose purpose remained a mystery to him.

He remembers being one of the last individuals to send or receive an actual telegram and recalls his attempts to avoid using the Telex machine, which involved feeding flimsy punched tapes into an unforgiving device. In Tokyo, facing significant time zone differences, he transmitted a long article through the Reuters news agency using a secret five-letter code.

Among the discarded items was a short-wave radio, once used to listen to the BBC World Service in places where truth was scarce and the BBC was a reliable source. He recounts listening to it at a low volume while lying on a concrete floor in Mogadishu in December 1992, uncertain of his ability to return home. The reassuring announcement, 'This is London,' only emphasized the immense distance from home.

Hitchens concludes that these discarded pieces of technology, which once represented the cutting edge of communication and were crucial to his work, are now obsolete and destined for disposal.