{"id":353,"date":"2011-01-14T15:04:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T23:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/?p=353"},"modified":"2011-04-20T14:17:14","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T22:17:14","slug":"mobile-telephones-%e2%80%93-past-present-and-landfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/2011\/01\/14\/mobile-telephones-%e2%80%93-past-present-and-landfill\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Telephones \u2013 Past, Present and Landfill"},"content":{"rendered":"

In anticipation of our opening next week for Sarah Rhul\u2019s biting satire\u00a0Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone<\/a><\/em> here are a few heady facts about the evolution of mobile phones:<\/p>\n

The first mobile telephone call was made from inside a car in St. Louis Missouri on June 17, 1946, but it was far from what we think of as a portable handset today. The car mounted equipment weighed 80 lbs, and the AT&T service, basically a massive party line, cost $30 per month plus 30 to 40 cents per local call.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Father of the handheld<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first handheld mobile phone was demonstrated by Dr. Martin Cooper (Born 1928) of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing 4.4 lbs. Cooper, then general manager of Motorola’s Communications Systems Division carried the hefty cell phone through New York City and placed a call to his rival, Joel Engels at Bell Labs via a connection to Engels\u2019 land line.\u00a0Dr. Cooper later revealed that watching Captain Kirk talking into his communicator on the tv show Star Trek inspired him to research the mobile phone.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producing that first phone in 1973 cost Motorola the equivalent of $1m in today’s currency and the battery lasted 20 minutes, after which you needed to recharge it for 10 hours.<\/p>\n

Ten years later Motorola released the first commercially available mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000x. The cost was equivalent to more than $10,000 today and the phone weighed in at 2.5 lbs. Luckily yuppies had shoulder pads on which to rest the hefty devices.<\/p>\n

Today 71% of Canadians either own a cell phone or plan to buy one in the near future.<\/p>\n

“The cellphone in the long range is going to be embedded under your skin behind your ear along with a very powerful computer who is in effect your slave”<\/em>. – Martin Cooper, inventor of the mobile phone<\/p>\n

Re-use, Reduce – and please Re-cycle<\/strong><\/p>\n

40,000 cellphones are thrown out across Canada every day, according to the Recycling Council of B.C.<\/a> Only 12% of used mobile devices in Canada are currently being recycled; the rest are stored, sold, gifted or thrown out.<\/p>\n

Mobile phones contain toxic substances that need to be disposed in a safe manner. Some dangerous components include cadmium, copper and nickel, which should not be normally disposed of as trash. Each phone contains about a dollar\u2019s worth of precious metals, mostly gold. More than 95 per cent of the materials in an average mobile device are recyclable.<\/p>\n

If you want to know where to recycle your phone go to RecycleMyCell.ca<\/a> and enter your postal code to find the closest drop off centre, or call 1-888-797-1740 for more information. Nationwide this re-cycling program collected 345,694 cell phones collected in 2009 alone (its first year) – that\u2019s 69.1388 tonnes of cell phones.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Note: Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone<\/a><\/em> opens January 20, 2011. To see production photos, designers\u2019 portfolio and more go to the Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone show site. Tickets are Reg. $22\/Senior $15\/Student $10 and are available online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In anticipation of our opening next week for Sarah Rhul\u2019s biting satire\u00a0Dead Man\u2019s Cell Phone here are a few heady facts about the evolution of mobile phones: The first mobile telephone call was made from inside a car in St. Louis Missouri on June 17, 1946, but it was far from what we think of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2208,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/theatre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}