Who Invented the Beeper

An article by Sam Reese    Comments Off

Beeper is a small portable electronic device that emits a beeping sound or signal. It is also referred to as a pager. The signal or sound is emitted when the person carrying the beeper is being paged or contacted by a contact. It was named as beepers as the sound emitted by the instrument resembles a beeping noise. Beepers may also be referred to as buzzer, pc speaker and avalanche transceiver.

It was invented by Al Gross in the year 1949. However, his invention was not approved by US Federal Communications Commission till 1958 for marketing and public use. The patent right was issued later in the year 1958. The inventor also received the patents for his several inventions namely, cordless phones, walkie-talkie and few other portable communication devices.

It is a simple telecommunication device for receiving only short messages. The beeping sound has been replaced with several tones like an audio signal or just vibration. Beepers were developed as one way numeric pager and two way pagers. One way pager can only receive an alpha numeric message and a two way pager can send and receive the messages.

Beepers or pagers were very popular until the existence of mobile phones in the year 1990. The role of beepers has been replaced by mobile devices though a few industries continue to use beepers.