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How Do Pagers Work And Where Did They Come From?

Believe it or not, pagers have been around since 1921. The Detroit Police Department used a pager type system and the first pager patented in 1949. It was not available for public use and the FCC didn't approve it for the public until 1958. The inventor, Al Gross first used his pagers in New York City's Jewish Hospital. The earliest pagers would only give a signal that would tell the user to call the answering service. It progressed to a unit that could display numbers the sender wanted you to call.

Let's look at how pagers work. A pager uses a dedicated radio frequency that allows the person using the pager to receive messages that has been broadcast over that dedicated frequency. These early pagers were numerical only, so a person could page the user and leave a phone number for a return call. They also had a limited range.

Mainly used as on-site ways of communications in their early use, they became more widely used when wide area paging became available around 1990. A typical early pager fit in a shirt pocket and could be made as small as a watch. When a message was received, the pager gives a beep. That's why they were also called beepers. One-way pagers could also receive short text messages.

Pagers have changed with the new technology that is constantly updated and has given them added new features. We now have a two-way pager, or messaging device that will allow the user to not only receive messages, but also send them. It also has been engineered to connect to the Internet and receive e-mail messages. These new two-way pagers have a built in keyboard, is now about the size of a pocket calculator, and has a liquid crystal display screen that will display several lines of text as well as simple graphics.

So how do pagers work? A pager has a small radio receiver that monitors a set radio frequency that is dedicated for pager use. It is silent unless it hears an ID linked to that pager and tells it to listen for a message. Your "capcode" signals your pager that a message is coming in to your pager. A group capcode can be used to send out the same message to a large number of people, which is how news and sports networks send out their alerts.