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History goes mobile

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Paul Sargeant Paul Sargeant | 16:21 UK time, Wednesday, 26 May 2010

A History of the World in your pocketAre you one of the people who's been emailing us to ask why there's no photo of the object on the podcast? (We'd love have one to but there is a technical problem stopping us.) If so, maybe I have a solution for you: look in your pockets.

We were already quite proud of putting a whole museum with objects from all over the country on your desktop. But now we've gone one better and put it in your pocket, with a version of A History of the World for mobile phones.

It means that you can see the object of the day, plus a daily selection of other interesting objects added to the site, and find the podcasts - all while doing your shopping or waiting for a train.

This is clearly exciting news, as confirmed by the email about it that arrived in my inbox:

Using device detection logic, mobile visitors should find the site optimised for their device, with quick, simple and accessible vertical navigation. All devices will be able to access recent podcasts without needing to sync with a desktop computer, and on some supported devices, there's even quick links into recent full programmes via the mobile iPlayer.

Now, personally, my excitement was only heightened by the fact that I didn't really understand any of this.

Vertical navigation? Sounds like rock climbing. Those of you who have been listening from the start will know that A History of the World is pretty keen on rocks, but this seems to be taking it a bit far. And exactly how many 'devices' will I need to find this new site? I asked James Simcock, the man behind the mobile site, to enlighten me.

Thanks to some clever technology, we can now spot whether someone is using a desktop, mobile phone or portable games console. If you are looking at the site on your mobile phone you will automatically get the new mobile site. It's been streamlined for quick access over mobile networks and features a simplified view of the latest object photos, info and programmes. And it's all shown in a single column to make it as easy as possible to use from a small screen.

No mention of rock climbing. But it does seem like the mobile site is a great way to see the object of the day while listening to the podcast or even, as announced last week, live radio on your mobile.

Just go to www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld on your mobile and we'll do the rest.


Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    is there any way to download all the episodes of this program with one click; right now the podcast have to do it one by one - already 46 and it is quite a tedious process...would the ´óÏó´«Ã½ consider providing this feature; I am even happy to pay for it and get a DVD with the images and the audio of the radio program. It would be great to show and tell when students are studying history - would you consider my request please?

  • Comment number 2.

    If you subscribe to the podcast using an application such as iTunes, Zune and ZENCast, you can set it up so that the latest episode downloads each time you turn on your computer. Otherwise, it's collecting them one at a time, I'm afraid. I hope you'll agree that it's worth it though. Remember, once you've downloaded them, they're yours to keep.

    Paul
    Blog editor

  • Comment number 3.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 4.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 5.

    Digital wireless and cellular roots go back to the1940s when commercial mobile telephony began. Compared to today's furious pace of development, it may seem odd that wireless didn't come along sooner. There are many reasons for that. Technology, disinterest, and to some extent regulation limited early United States radio-telephone development. As the vacuum tube and the transistor made possible the early telephone network, the wireless revolution began only after low cost microprocessors and digital switching became available. And while the Bell System built the finest landline telephone system in the world, they never seemed truly committed to mobile telephony. Their wireless engineers were brilliant and keen but the System itself held them back. Federal regulations also hindered many projects but in Europe, where state run telephone companies controlled their own telecom development, although, admittedly, without competition, wireless came no sooner, and in most cases, later. Starting in 1921 in the United States mobile radios began operating at 2 MHz, just above the present A.M. radio broadcast band. [Young] These were chiefly experimental police department radios, with practical systems not implemented until the 1940s. [FCC] Police and emergency services drove mobile radio pioneering, with little thought given to private telephone use.In 1934 the United States Congress created the Federal Communications Commission. In addition to regulating landline interstate telephone business, they also began managing the radio spectrum. It decided who would get what frequencies. It gave priority to emergency services, government agencies, utility companies, and services it thought helped the most people. Radio users like a taxi service or a tow truck dispatch company required little spectrum to conduct their business. Radio telephone used large frequency allocations to serve a few people. The FCC designated no radio-telephone channels until after World War II.On June 17, 1946 in Saint Louis, Missouri, AT&T and Southwestern Bell introduced the first American commercial mobile radio-telephone service. Mobiles used newly issued vehicle radio-telephone licenses granted to Southwestern Bell by the FCC. They operated on six channels in the 150 MHz band with a 60 kHz channel spacing. [Peterson] Bad cross channel interference, something like cross talk in a landline phone, soon forced Bell to use only three channels. In a rare exception to Bell System practice, subscribers could buy their own radio sets and not AT&T's equipment Installed high above Southwestern Bell's headquarters at 1010 Pine Street, a centrally located antenna transmitting 250 watts paged mobiles and provided radio-telephone traffic on the downlink. Operation was straightforward, as the following describes:One party talked at a time with MTS. You pushed a handset button to talk, then released the button to listen. (This eliminated echo problems which took years to solve before natural, full duplex communications were possible.) Mobile telephone service was not simplex operation as many writers describe, but half duplex operation. Simplex uses only one frequency to both transmit and receive. In MTS the base station frequency and mobile frequency were offset by five kHz. Privacy is one reason to do this; eavesdroppers could hear only one side of a conversation. Like a citizen's band radio, a caller searched manually for an unused frequency before placing a call. But since there were so few channels this wasn't much of a problem. This does point out radio-telephones' greatest problem of the time: too few channels. This system presaged many cellular developments, indeed, Bell Laboratories' D.H. Ring articulated the cellular concept one year later in an unpublished paper. Young states all the elements were known then: a network of small geographical areas called cells, a low powered transmitter in each, the cell traffic controlled by a central switch, frequencies reused by different cells and so on. Young states that from 1947 Bell teams "had faith that the means for administering and connecting to many small cells would evolve by the time they were needed." [Young] While recognizing the Laboratories' prescience, more mobile telephones were always needed. In every city where mobile telephone service was introduced waiting lists developed, growing every year. By 1976 only 545 customers in New York City had Bell System mobiles, with 3,700 customers on the waiting list. Around the country 44,000 Bell subscribers had AT&T mobiles but 20,000 people sat on five to ten year waiting lists. [Gibson] Despite this incredible demand it took cellular 37 years to go commercial from the mobile phone's introduction. But the FCC's regulatory foot dragging slowed cellular as well. Until the 1980s they never made enough channels available; as late as 1978 the Bell System, the Independents, and the non-wireline carriers divided just 54 channels nationwide. [O'Brien] That compares to the 666 channels the first AMPS systems needed to work.In mobile telephony a channel is a pair of frequencies. One frequency to transmit on and one to receive. It makes up a circuit or a complete communication path. Sounds simple enough to accommodate. Yet the radio spectrum is extremely crowded. In the late 1940s little space existed at the lower frequencies most equipment used. Inefficient radios contributed to the crowding, using 60 kHz to send an signal that can now be done with 10kHz or less. But what could you do with just six channels, no matter what the technology? Users by the scores vied for an open frequency. You had, in effect, a wireless party line, with perhaps forty subscribers fighting to place calls on each channel. Most mobile telephone systems couldn't accommodate more than 250 people. There were other problems.

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