Pager

Why It Mattered

It let a particular person be reached while moving around rather than waiting beside a fixed telephone, without relying on general bells, buzzers or loudspeaker announcements. The idea remained valuable well beyond its 1980s radio-paging heyday: a Motorola Minicall supplied to London Ambulance Service cycle responders dates from 2000–02, while paging is still marketed for specialist critical-communications settings.

The hospital bleep system

• St Thomas’ attributes its 1954 “first bleep” system to Peter Styles working with Multitone; this is an institutional claim about that British hospital system.
• Multitone dates installation of its closed-loop paging system at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, to 1956.
• A 1956 advertisement describes a magnetic induction loop, pocket receiver, selective calling and direct speech messaging.

From selective calls to radio messages

• A 1957 Multitone advertisement says St Thomas’ had 70 receivers in use, activated through push-button calling.
• Later dedicated radio networks supported numeric and alphanumeric messages; POCSAG variants operated at 512, 1,200 and 2,400 bit/s.
• The Science Museum Group places radio pagers in use by mobile professionals from the mid-1970s and calls the 1980s their heyday.

Specialist use and preservation

• A 2000–02 Motorola Pager One Minicall in the Science Museum Group collection was supplied to London Ambulance Service cycle responders.
• In 2019, the Department of Health and Social Care said NHS trusts should phase out pagers for non-emergency communications by the end of 2021, allowing retention in some emergency circumstances.
• Preserve a pager with its assigned number, battery and charger, manuals, service and coverage records, and the user’s role; the device is part of a communications system.

Associated With

Peter Styles - developer of the hospital paging system; Multitone Electronics - development and manufacturing partner

Defining Feature

Portable selective-call receiver; early St Thomas’ system used a magnetic induction loop and direct speech messaging

Status

Unknown - Later radio paging declined from general use but remains supplied for specialist critical communications

Primary Records

• St Thomas’ Hospital: history and innovations — Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
• Our History — Multitone
• Multitone Staff Location System advertisement, Wireless World, October 1956
• Multitone Personal Call advertisement, Wireless World, June 1957

Image Sources

• Image 1
• Image 2
• Image 3
• Image 4
• Image 5

Rights Notice

Images are included for historical and archival reference.

Rights holders may contact Forgotten Archive through the publishing account to request a credit correction or removal.

Gallery and image credits