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« on: August 08, 2020, 03:32:38 am »
One of my friends had a pager way after everyone had mobile phones. We used to laugh at him but he didn't want to be disturbed at work to take calls. From memory (which is not all that great, tbh), pagers went through a pager service. So I'd call the pager service and they'd send the page with my number.
I have no idea when answering machines came into being but before that, answering services existed. So someone would redirect their number to the answering service and an actual human took the message and passed it on. That would be something really expensive that only a business person etc would have.
Although, a doctor would have a receptionist to do that so if he he had a mobile phone, it'd be likely patients would ring the receptionist and she'd pass on the call to the doctor.
Payphones were still in use. In Australia, you could only use them to ring out but I remember watching American dramas where people would give someone the payphone number and receive calls. If you didn't have change, you could always ring reverse charges (I think Americans call it something else) and the person on the other end would pay for the call. Of course, you'd only do that with friends, family etc and if it was urgent. We had phone boxes which I think gave a lot more privacy than the pay phones with just a hood thing over them. The main annoyance with them was calls dropping out, not having enough change or needing to use the phone while someone was on a long call (and there was a whole thing if you were on the phone, you never made eye contact with the person waiting). And of course, phones were often vandalised.
For a long time having a mobile phone was a showoff thing. People would walk around pretending to be on calls just to have their phone out. And they'd talk in really loud voices like look at me on the phone. I have some neighbours now who still go outside to take calls and do that!
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