This guy has spent a lot of time putting this history together, and he's quite accurate from a West Coast viewpoint.
His second chapter gets into both MTS and IMTS phones.
Radio sales tended to be very geographical back in the 50s & 60s. Motorola only sold factory direct and franchised service dealers city by city. To maintain production Motorola required trade in units to come back to Shlumberg for reconditioning and sale back thru the company.
In the era of a limited number of 450mhz UHF repeater channels available both Motorola and GE tried to License as many as possible in each city leaving the shops out in the cold. Needless to say, shops retaliated and company owned repeaters tended to have a lot of coverage problems.
Rochester was the home of RF Company now Harris RF in the 60s and a lot of fun. RF was trying to build in the Land Mobil market and had a couple sharp fellows devoting their time to depriving Motorola and GE of repeater channels.
Rochester was also the home of the company that built the first Mobil Data Terminal, XEROX. The idea was first rate, but the technology to support MDT didn't exist in the world of analog radio. The system that was tested more closely resembled TXT with a 3" tube display.
Thoose were some fun times with 100 watt mobiles and 250 watt base stations.
DIRECTORY OF MOTOROLA POLICE RADIO EQUIPMENT 1942-
www.wb6nvh.com
Radio sales tended to be very geographical back in the 50s & 60s. Motorola only sold factory direct and franchised service dealers city by city. To maintain production Motorola required trade in units to come back to Shlumberg for reconditioning and sale back thru the company.
In the era of a limited number of 450mhz UHF repeater channels available both Motorola and GE tried to License as many as possible in each city leaving the shops out in the cold. Needless to say, shops retaliated and company owned repeaters tended to have a lot of coverage problems.
Rochester was the home of RF Company now Harris RF in the 60s and a lot of fun. RF was trying to build in the Land Mobil market and had a couple sharp fellows devoting their time to depriving Motorola and GE of repeater channels.
Rochester was also the home of the company that built the first Mobil Data Terminal, XEROX. The idea was first rate, but the technology to support MDT didn't exist in the world of analog radio. The system that was tested more closely resembled TXT with a 3" tube display.
Thoose were some fun times with 100 watt mobiles and 250 watt base stations.