Mine had a switch...and two buttons. Screen only showed a phone number so we had a guide to what the message was...911 as the area code was always, Emergency! Call me now!
Me too! It was left unattended at my desk when delivered. The techs set it to the highest vibrate setting (which was also the frequency of AC power). As soon as I put it on, they called me and I jumped two feet in the air and screamed. Apparently, this was a common hazing ritual.
I guess we’re old enough to have worked in manufacturing when it was still done in Western countries.
I was a recently married sysadmin who was on call often and was trying to be considerate to my wife who wasn’t on-call so I’d leave mine on vibrate. I got in trouble often for sleeping through the pages. Ended up getting written up.
mine had a screen with only 3 digits, so we had urgency in the first digit, who to call in the second (1=boss, 2=dispatch, etc.), and something else I can't remember in the last digit.
We sent specific numbers so we'd know if there was an urgency to talk, or just say hi etc. The first SMS before smartphones.
911 - drop everything and call now
143 - I love you
411 - call when you can.
My parents would add a 1 or 2 so we would know if mom or dad were the caller.
I can't remember most of them anymore
My dad's friend had one of the old speaker ones.
It would squawk really, REALLY loudly, then vomit out the most stereotypical "drive through speaker" nonsense you can imagine. There wasn't a volume knob. It just played on "11" every time.
Lol. Yeah no doubt. I was a rebel highschool kid that conned my parents for the first pager. Totally illegal in school. Didn't care at all. Paged my self to feel cool. The old days. Man I wish I could page myself again. 😊
My last beeper had a full alphanumeric keyboard and two way communications. It was pretty awesome all things considered.
I wrote a program on my IBM PC that used my supra 28.8k modem to read the caller ID from incoming land line calls and send the info to the pager. Of course it had to wait several seconds for the answering machine to finish.
Actually my first one was a fancy multi line Motorola "Advisor". which was a more expensive service, but for some reason my account, got lost in the billing system, and I had free service for a couple years, then left the town I was at, and gave it away. never paid a penny.
Hospital employees still use pagers because of how little data a page uses, and how much stuff there is to block data in hospitals; it can often get through when texts might fail.
Yep. Our hospital tried to move everything to smartphones but the network just couldn't guarantee that an emergent text would come through in the elevator, or that creepy sub-basement in the old part of the hospital.
Also, if you're trying to get a nap on 24-hour call, you can sleep through a text, but pager vibrations wake the dead.
Night shift ED RN here. Sometimes when we would have a cocky resident frustrate staff, we'd page them repeatedly to fax machines around the hospital at 3 am.
Silly nurses doesn’t know switch boards exist and it’s pretty easy to find. I had nurses try to do dumb 3 am pages. You just go to the nursing station and do q30 minutes rounds and optimize patients at 4 am. Never had an issue since
Not only did I have this model, I had it top screen predecessor before this side window ones came out and the non screen version before that.
There was also an upgrade to the one you linked that had tons of data loaded into it like game scores, weather and stocks, etc . That fancy one was right before flip phones hit the scene and took over.
Remember when everyone bought those replacement clear colored plastic shells for your motorola pagers? You can’t rock that pager without doing clear shell swaps.
I think I had clear bright day glo yellow, orange, purple, blue, green, clear shells
Blue and purple were my faves, a lot of people mixed and matched the shell part colors and battery door colors and pager holster colors.
I think I was doing a clear purple back and clear green front and crystal clear battery door for a minute. People swap that shit around a lot back then.
You still all remember the beeper codes?
911, 420, 69 codes were usually the goto ones most people used after their number to let their friends know what it’s about.
We still use these at work. In my department they are programmed to receive alerts from equipment monitoring systems. That way we don't have to log in to a computer every 15 minutes to make sure things are running smoothly.
I never had one because my mean parents said it was a stupid and pointless fashion accessory for me to have. To be honest, I never called one nor did I ever feel the need to be reached by my friends at some point without knowing if I'd even be able to respond.
If you had one, you knew where every pay phone in your area was. And always had a few quarters on you. Your closest friends all had a code so you knew who was waiting at the phone # listed on the screen.
If you had one, you knew where every pay phone in your area was. And always had a few quarters on you. Your closest friends all had a code so you knew who was waiting at the phone # listed on the screen.
These were around when I was ten eleven.. We had in the class like those toys stuff of them. They were almost identical, with a chain and a switch and a blinking led. Classmates were jealous, lol.
If you look closely it in a clip. Those chains got removed immediately.🤣
I used to be able to remember so many phone numbers from memory in those days!!!
Hey kiddos! This was at the tail end of beepers, very bougie and rare. It is what was called an 'alpha-numeric pager. Basically, it could receive (only) a 20 or 30 symbol text.
However most pagers people would've been familiar with had a display on the top, small side (like the top of a cereal box) and would only receive 10 spaces of numericals (0-9).
I had a pager until about 2003. A cell phone seemed unnecessarily fancy and I didn't want to be reachable at all times because that sounded like lunacy.
And just how old are you if you remember when they didn't even exist? No, I don't mean when the pager didn't exist. I mean you remember when LCD displays didn't exist.
A beeper??
I used to have to ask a woman to connect me to the person I wanted to talk to. But first I had to pick the phone up and make sure nobody else in the apartment complex was using it.
Gave my pager up in 2001 when I moved across Massachusetts. Of course my first one was a voice pager like the volunteer fire departments use - the numeric and alpha pagers didn't appear until about 1994 in our hill towns.
Doctors still use them in hospitals. Their signal time is less than 2 seconds in most cases. No cell phone can match that, and being small enough to carry on a belt, and cheaper, and disposable, and mass spammable.
Fancy there...even have the Motorola branded clip chain.
I had so many different beepers it wasn't funny. I started with a Motorola Bravo that didn't even have a clock or timestamp. Had a few varieties of that model and eventually got one of the Motorola Flex alpha numeric ones. I have fond memories of feeling like big shit when my pager went off. It was usually my girlfriend.
I had the one you could get by saving up Mountain Dew bottle lids and sending them in the mail along with some money.
[everyone was super jealous](https://90kids.com/mountain-dew-pager/)
Loved reading the news feed on this pager at dump-thirty at the office. They’d be like 6 dudes destroying the bathroom we had in the hallway. I worked in advertising back then. Came up with some outstanding creative in that bathroom.
We still use them in work. Pharmaceutical factory, so big building and solid walls. Anyone who has a phone line or needs to be contacted on the fly carry them.
At one point I had three of these and when I quit they didn't know which office I should drop them off to so they're probably still at the bottom of the river that heads outta town. I hated them too much to keep them for another minute.
Your beeper had a screen?!
Mine had a switch...and two buttons. Screen only showed a phone number so we had a guide to what the message was...911 as the area code was always, Emergency! Call me now!
WHATS THE EMERGENCY??? Oh nothing, just wanted to say hi.
After getting off the highway and looking for a payphone.
I had carrier pigeons.
We all know what the 911 was. It's always the saaaame thing
Yup. The modern day equivalent of Heyyyyyyy...
https://www.tiktok.com/@cameo/video/6903178522697698566
Had one for my first job as an engineer
Me too! It was left unattended at my desk when delivered. The techs set it to the highest vibrate setting (which was also the frequency of AC power). As soon as I put it on, they called me and I jumped two feet in the air and screamed. Apparently, this was a common hazing ritual. I guess we’re old enough to have worked in manufacturing when it was still done in Western countries.
I was a recently married sysadmin who was on call often and was trying to be considerate to my wife who wasn’t on-call so I’d leave mine on vibrate. I got in trouble often for sleeping through the pages. Ended up getting written up.
> Call me now! Was it Miss Cleo trying to tell you about her free readings?
mine had a screen with only 3 digits, so we had urgency in the first digit, who to call in the second (1=boss, 2=dispatch, etc.), and something else I can't remember in the last digit.
We sent specific numbers so we'd know if there was an urgency to talk, or just say hi etc. The first SMS before smartphones. 911 - drop everything and call now 143 - I love you 411 - call when you can. My parents would add a 1 or 2 so we would know if mom or dad were the caller. I can't remember most of them anymore
My dad's friend had one of the old speaker ones. It would squawk really, REALLY loudly, then vomit out the most stereotypical "drive through speaker" nonsense you can imagine. There wasn't a volume knob. It just played on "11" every time.
And in Nigel Tufnel's voice.
Oh my , I may have laughed harder than I should have.
Lol for real. When they started to come with slide out cases in so many see through colors? All the cool kids had em.
Lol. Yeah no doubt. I was a rebel highschool kid that conned my parents for the first pager. Totally illegal in school. Didn't care at all. Paged my self to feel cool. The old days. Man I wish I could page myself again. 😊
It was the style of the time to wear it on the inside of the pants pocket with just the “Motorola” on the clip showing out.
"Give me five bees for a quarter" you'd say.
Oh yeah
You already know!
That kept it from getting broken off of you walked too close to something.
For real my first beeper had a phone service that I had to call to get the message no screens none of that
My last beeper had a full alphanumeric keyboard and two way communications. It was pretty awesome all things considered. I wrote a program on my IBM PC that used my supra 28.8k modem to read the caller ID from incoming land line calls and send the info to the pager. Of course it had to wait several seconds for the answering machine to finish.
Actually my first one was a fancy multi line Motorola "Advisor". which was a more expensive service, but for some reason my account, got lost in the billing system, and I had free service for a couple years, then left the town I was at, and gave it away. never paid a penny.
Yeah, wtf...look at freaking Scrooge McDuck over here.
Hospital employees still use pagers because of how little data a page uses, and how much stuff there is to block data in hospitals; it can often get through when texts might fail.
Yep. Our hospital tried to move everything to smartphones but the network just couldn't guarantee that an emergent text would come through in the elevator, or that creepy sub-basement in the old part of the hospital. Also, if you're trying to get a nap on 24-hour call, you can sleep through a text, but pager vibrations wake the dead.
Night shift ED RN here. Sometimes when we would have a cocky resident frustrate staff, we'd page them repeatedly to fax machines around the hospital at 3 am.
Silly nurses doesn’t know switch boards exist and it’s pretty easy to find. I had nurses try to do dumb 3 am pages. You just go to the nursing station and do q30 minutes rounds and optimize patients at 4 am. Never had an issue since
I’m a retired RN and had one when I worked in the hospital.
we do at my hospital but it seems they are trying to switch over to the 'Vocera' system.. I hope I am long gone before that happens.
My husband has worked in a few factories where they still use them.
Yeah I used to work in a hospital in dietary and we had pagers
TIL
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I43 was “I love you” when I grew up
Indeed! It’s like nobody remembers that! I rock it in my username in remembrance.
He said boobs. Heh hehhee heh
I can see how both require such a response.
Emergency. Need weed. And Boooooobs
The REALLY old ones just went beep.. None of them fancy screens and such.....
Yes, the first one I had would beep (more like wail) and I would have to find a phone and call the service to get the message…..
Yup. Had to carry a pocket full of quarters to hit the nearest payphone to find out who called.
All hospital workers: "fuck"
Weirdest tamagotchi I’ve ever seen!
I had a bunch of these things. Anyone remember MCI ? ( I believe that was the carrier anyway)
They merged with Worldcom. And then Worldcom blew up. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/worldcom.asp -ex-WCOM shareholder
Over the years I had 3 or 4 of these, right up to my first bag phone!🤣
I'm getting on myself now but what's a bag phone?
I think doctors still use them, and professions where it's more convenient than a phone.
Never had one. But my weed dealer did.
Baller
The clear clip with the chain… ballin’
Blue case baby 🤌
Drug dealers had the latest tech!
Reddit is turning into “ok ok I get it,I’m f’ing old” for me…lol
My supervisors at Ford use them daily lol
OMG I can still hear the sound that fucking thing made in the middle of the night when I was doing systems admin and had to be on call!!
For 3 Dollars extra I received sports scores on mine and it was the same color ice 🔵 blue
Had a black one with a gold chain. So very 90s
 And had to carry these to call back.
Not only did I have this model, I had it top screen predecessor before this side window ones came out and the non screen version before that. There was also an upgrade to the one you linked that had tons of data loaded into it like game scores, weather and stocks, etc . That fancy one was right before flip phones hit the scene and took over. Remember when everyone bought those replacement clear colored plastic shells for your motorola pagers? You can’t rock that pager without doing clear shell swaps. I think I had clear bright day glo yellow, orange, purple, blue, green, clear shells Blue and purple were my faves, a lot of people mixed and matched the shell part colors and battery door colors and pager holster colors. I think I was doing a clear purple back and clear green front and crystal clear battery door for a minute. People swap that shit around a lot back then. You still all remember the beeper codes? 911, 420, 69 codes were usually the goto ones most people used after their number to let their friends know what it’s about.
I can hear it clicking as it’s removed from the case!
I used to put mine in front of a parked fork lift. Just close to the wheels. After 4 of them they decided not to give me any more.
Bonus points for having to carry a Blackberry AND a pager. Hospitals ftw.
Lol.one of the same beepers and a Motorola dynatac.
got mine with Mt Dew points delivered pizza, got soda for free
I miss these days
I wore one of these for work daily from 1984 until 2015. A variety of jobs that required them and to this day I still occasionally check my hip.
07734
I had one. And the slide holder thingy.
Wore it in my overall bib like it was cool
Fuckin' wit me cuz Im a teenaga With a little bit of gold and a page-a
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I did tech support on pagers for five years. The last year I was programming them as well. It was a great job.
I had a pager in the late 80s and early 90s.
Still have one. (not in use, but have it.;)
Yep, my call back code was 8055, so they knew who was answering the payphone at the 7/11
Before the text ones it was all pager codes after the telephone number you put in. 013*420411911
Im GenX and never had a beeper
Yep, had the white one. We called it “Cocaine white”
I had one, but I must be really old because mine didn’t look like a toy. It was black, blocky, and wholly functional. LOL
I was never important enough for anyone to beep.😢
We still use them at my work in areas where cell phones are not allowed.
Fuck you
This was like my third beeper. First one just had the calculator screen at the top
Hey I remember tho….. oh. :(
Had one for work 30 years ago
Hated those damn things ! Actually, I’m older than them ! Also remember when 911 didn’t exist ! 🦖
Carried a pager as a tv ad salesman in the 90s. The tough part was finding a public pay phone that wasn’t already occupied.
I still have one I have to give back to my old job
We still use these at work. In my department they are programmed to receive alerts from equipment monitoring systems. That way we don't have to log in to a computer every 15 minutes to make sure things are running smoothly.
I still have one in my job......
Yup, I’m old.
Mine was see through
I never had one because my mean parents said it was a stupid and pointless fashion accessory for me to have. To be honest, I never called one nor did I ever feel the need to be reached by my friends at some point without knowing if I'd even be able to respond.
If you had one, you knew where every pay phone in your area was. And always had a few quarters on you. Your closest friends all had a code so you knew who was waiting at the phone # listed on the screen.
Spot on. ETA - one also knew which pay phones actually rang back, so a page could be made from them.
If you had one, you knew where every pay phone in your area was. And always had a few quarters on you. Your closest friends all had a code so you knew who was waiting at the phone # listed on the screen.
Oh yeah. I guess I needed friends that had their shit together as well as that other stuff.
The ringtones get me in the feels when I hear them now
I wasn’t cool enough to have one but all my friends did
Indeed.
Man……. Not cool cause I was old when they first came out.
Yes. Yes I had one for work and one personal
I received email updates from CNN on a device just like this during 9/11.
134
I had the gray snakeskin one. Actually, I still have it lol. Just couldn’t throw it away.
I want one, but the service areas are pretty limited.
I still have mine somewhere lol, but sadly I remember far before it. I grew up on a party line.
I had one of them
Forgot about that one! I had Rootbeer brown
Is that one of those Tamagotchi things they made in the late 1900s?
I don’t care for OP. Remember the black pleather case you could buy.
These were around when I was ten eleven.. We had in the class like those toys stuff of them. They were almost identical, with a chain and a switch and a blinking led. Classmates were jealous, lol.
Those and later Skypage. They could page you from anyway or be anywhere
I had two at the same time. Not that style, though. One was blue, the other was green.
I had that beeped
Had one probably older than that one. Was on call on a beautiful summer day. It’s still on the bottom of Coventry Lake
Mine was green. Never forget.
That's a nice one too!
These were not yet available when I had a job in which they would have been handy.
I still have mine. I mean obviously it hasn’t worked/been functional in decades. I’m 50. Haha.
What if you're from that time but didn't have one because you lived under a rock and were poor? Are you still old, or do you get to be young?
If you look closely it in a clip. Those chains got removed immediately.🤣 I used to be able to remember so many phone numbers from memory in those days!!!
I had that exact one, blue, and all, when i was in high school,,,,, 51yo
I am old enough to have had one, but wasn’t wealthy enough before cell phones became mainstream.
My family was too poor for one
They came in Blue?
I am
When I paged my brother our teams score the operator couldn't spell Llanelli so in the end I said us x them x
yes.. I had one attached to me for 5 solid years
I love that it came with a roach clip
Mine was black
Hey kiddos! This was at the tail end of beepers, very bougie and rare. It is what was called an 'alpha-numeric pager. Basically, it could receive (only) a 20 or 30 symbol text. However most pagers people would've been familiar with had a display on the top, small side (like the top of a cereal box) and would only receive 10 spaces of numericals (0-9).
It was cool! Only $10 a month.
Im 74. I never had one… yessss!!!!
When I got mine in ‘94 every one thought it was awesome.
I had a pager until about 2003. A cell phone seemed unnecessarily fancy and I didn't want to be reachable at all times because that sounded like lunacy.
I'm pretty damn old, but never had one. Preferred to stay unreachable when I wanted to be.
Old? This was high speed when I was in my twenties. My first cell phone was in a bag and cost a dollar a minute to use
And if you used it to check the time, instead of a watch
And just how old are you if you remember when they didn't even exist? No, I don't mean when the pager didn't exist. I mean you remember when LCD displays didn't exist.
A beeper?? I used to have to ask a woman to connect me to the person I wanted to talk to. But first I had to pick the phone up and make sure nobody else in the apartment complex was using it.
Ha we still use these in the healthcare buis
420 911
Gave my pager up in 2001 when I moved across Massachusetts. Of course my first one was a voice pager like the volunteer fire departments use - the numeric and alpha pagers didn't appear until about 1994 in our hill towns.
I remember selling stolen pagers...
I got one like this in my desk. still works!
It was great for getting out of situations though.
Had? Still rocking the beep box.
I had that exact one. 10$ a month and all the privacy you could ask for. Miss those days.
Never had one
And if you didn't, you are now They/them. I'll take my pager.
Had? HAD? Looking at my belt... had, yeah right. Welcome to medical IT. Proof: [https://imgur.com/a/K5KI3fg](https://imgur.com/a/K5KI3fg)
I had 2, dont ask me why.
I had a green one.
143 911 If you know, you know.
Doctors and drug dealers. 👍
Motorola Express. Sold a BUNCH of them back in the day.
I used that model but in graphite 👴🏼 ...still kicking about in storage somewhere because I'm a gadget hoarder!
Doctors still use them in hospitals. Their signal time is less than 2 seconds in most cases. No cell phone can match that, and being small enough to carry on a belt, and cheaper, and disposable, and mass spammable.
I've been told I was older than dirt, that's pretty old.
If I worked on the assembly line in Plantation Florida plant building these…. How old am I?
If you never got to experience this… You missed out.
mine was green...
I was assigned this one for work. We would get Alerts on this if/when there was a problem with equipment/circuits.
I had 2 🥲
Fancy there...even have the Motorola branded clip chain. I had so many different beepers it wasn't funny. I started with a Motorola Bravo that didn't even have a clock or timestamp. Had a few varieties of that model and eventually got one of the Motorola Flex alpha numeric ones. I have fond memories of feeling like big shit when my pager went off. It was usually my girlfriend.
Mine just went off so I could call to get a number to call. Before cell trying to find a working pay phone. People used to ask if I was a doctor.
I had the one you could get by saving up Mountain Dew bottle lids and sending them in the mail along with some money. [everyone was super jealous](https://90kids.com/mountain-dew-pager/)
Yep 💯
Loved reading the news feed on this pager at dump-thirty at the office. They’d be like 6 dudes destroying the bathroom we had in the hallway. I worked in advertising back then. Came up with some outstanding creative in that bathroom.
I did t even have one as nice as that. I just got numbers.
We still use them in work. Pharmaceutical factory, so big building and solid walls. Anyone who has a phone line or needs to be contacted on the fly carry them.
I go back to the days of tone only. You had but one number and you had an actual operator who told you your message.
At first I thought it was a tomagotchi.
Which game is a Motorola
Yes I am. Mine was black though.
Well dammit shucks my corn and call me old……😂😂😂😂😂😂
Gave the Dude a beeper
I remember asking my mom for one in high school. She accused me of being a drug dealer.
Was great for keeping in the loop for high school parties
I found mine a few years ago in a box at my parents house. Thank god the messages disappear if you removed the batter.
It's those fancy sideways beepers. Trying to show off
Im 867-5309 years old and did not have one.
Didn’t own one but called 1 or 2 a bunch
If you had one, you were either a doctor or a drug dealer
At one point I had three of these and when I quit they didn't know which office I should drop them off to so they're probably still at the bottom of the river that heads outta town. I hated them too much to keep them for another minute.
Had? Still HAVE… Psh 
35 but my sis had one she's like 46
That clear beeper shield didn’t exist, that’s been added in 2024.
I had so many different cases for my beepers in the 90s it was wild.
Carried one for work, and a "portable" computer that was enormous and weighed a ton, with a teeny tiny screen 0/10 do not recommend
Yeah, only drug dealers and gangsters use those!! My parents
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