Olivia Aldrich HIS5067

My partner Joseph has been working on a heatmap of payphones within the United States today, using Tableu, an open-source platform, to try and create this heatmap that we will incorporate into our interactive timeline on the social implications of the evolution of cellular technology. He also has plans to try and make lesson plans, if time permits, that teachers could use along with the timeline to discuss the evolution of this technology and the social changes it has brought about.  My main focus the past week has been organizing my wealth of information on the evolution of cellular technology. I have established my periodization, which will go from 1876 to 2010. The earlier dates will be briefer in technological information, as the Maitland A&H Telephone Museum has much more information on this earlier technology than it does on the social implications of this early technology and on the information of later 20th and 21st-century technology. Starting in 1960, the timeline wil...

We are moving along well with our Telephone Museum project – Joseph is continuing to delve into the reasons that payphones still exist in the US today, while I am continuing to research the social implications of cellular technology and its more contemporary technological evolutions. We discussed deliverables in class, and I think I will be utilizing a basic report format to disseminate my information on the evolution of cellular technology but will also try to create an interactive timeline that can house the social implications of the technology in an easy to read manner. I think pairing a basic report with the interactive “clickable” timeline will help articulate this dense wealth of information in the most palatable and interesting way. Some websites I am considering for the timeline are: https://www.sutori.com/en/story/timeline-template--8Ce6i7GEYDxa4EUvtLXnoPuH https://www.visme.co/search-templates/?search=timeline Google Sheets timeline I have a pretty full-fledged vie...

Now that Joseph and I have established our research questions and goals, we have both gotten to work delving into the social implications of cellular technology and payphones in the United States. We are both updating our shared Google document with the variety of sources and information we find on our respective topics, enabling us both to read up on both aspects while maintaining focus on our own work.  In looking at the evolution of cellular technology, I have decided that the best approach would be to make my own timeline of cellular technology's history. The Maitland A&H Telephone Museum already has its own timeline, which ends at the Motorola DynaTAC in 1984 - there is a lot of focus on the switching room, switchboards, phone booths, and touch-tone phones within the museum's timeline and displays. Given this abundance of early cellular history within the museum, I will focus my attention on the evolution of cellular technology past 1984 to bring the timeline into the...

With our research project on the Maitland A&H Telephone Museum, Joseph and I have decided to split the two essential questions the project is asking and have each of us focus on one question before converging our information within a shared Google document to establish the larger historical themes of cellular technology. This will work perfectly - Joseph is a social historian who will better define the social and economic implications of still-existent payphones in the United States, while I enjoy the history of technology and can trace the explosive development of cellular technology within the last 100 years. We will further discuss our approach and research on Monday.  At first, I was worried I was not going to be entirely interested in the history of cellular technology because cellular technology is something I have been surrounded with every day since I was born. Cell phones, cell towers, wireless devices, satellites, and smartphones are all things I am well acquainted wi...

 Blog Created 1/13/2022 for HIS5067