Before the devices that are now referred to as mobile phones existed, there were some precursors. In 1908 a Professor Albert Jahnke and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not seem to have proceeded with production.[2] Beginning in 1918 the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen.[3] In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie A. G. was founded to supply train telephony equipment and in 1926 telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to 1st class travelers.[4]
Karl Arnold drawing of public use of mobile telephones
In 1907, the English caricaturist Lewis Baumer published a cartoon in Punch magazine entitled "Predictions for 1907" in which he showed a man and a woman in London's Hyde Park each separately engaged in gambling and dating on wireless telephony equipment. Then in 1926 the artist Karl Arnold created a visionary cartoon about the use of mobile phones in the street, in the picture "wireless telephony", published in the German satirical magazine Simplicissimus.[5]
The portrayal of a utopia of mobile phone in literature dates back to the year 1931. It is found in Erich Kästner's children's book The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas:
“ A gentleman who rode along the sidewalk in front of them, suddenly stepped off the conveyor belt, pulled a phone from his coat pocket, spoke a number into it and shouted: "Gertrude, listen, I'll be an hour late for lunch because I want to go to the laboratory. Goodbye, sweetheart!" Then he put his pocket phone away again, stepped back on the conveyor belt, started reading a book... ”
—Erich Kästner
The Second World...