Status Updates From Losing the Signal: The Unto...

It was July 22, 1993. Representatives from technology companies were gathered to show off the latest if mobile communications. President Bill Clinton led an entourage through the tents.

The competitor digging with the largest shovel was Motorola, then the dominant global maker of cellphones and pagers. The Chicago firm opened a new market with Tango, a pager that not only received messages but enabled responses.

Engineers are by nature impudent, often staging stunts to show off their technical prowess. University of British Columbia engineers, for example, grabbed headlines in 2001 by hanging a Volkwagen Beetle from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Galvin's next innovation turned the Illinois firm into a global player. More than forty thousand U.S. soldiers entered World War II with portable two-way radions that later became universally popular under the name "walkie talkies."

Abramson's solution was ALOHAnet, a network of software... The advent of computers and digital communication made it possible to modulate radio waves, once shaped to convey the dashes and dots of Morse code, to relay digital bits known as 1s and 0s.

Jim Balsillie fidgeted with his phone as his Dassault Falcon jet touched down at Dubai’s International airport. It had been several hours since the co-chief executive and relentless global pitchman for Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) powered off his BlackBerry when the plane left the company’s Canadian hometown in Waterloo, Ontario.📱🛩️