What is a Pager?

Lynette Dufton
2 min readSep 18, 2024

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When today’s news revealed that exploding pagers killed nine people and wounded 2,800(!) in Lebanon, most Americans under age 50 probably asked, “What is a pager?”

In the long-ago days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and cell phones were the size of Arnold Scwharzenegger’s forearm (see Seinfeld episodes for proof), pagers were the only way to contact someone “on the move”. Medical personnel and important executives clipped a pager (about the size of a cigarette pack) to their belt. It would “buzz” and reveal a phone number to be called. The “pagee” would hustle to the nearest phone booth (no car phones at the time) and defuse the crisis du jour.

The biggest problem was a lack of interconnectivity between pager companies. A doctor who worked at several hospitals or offices might need a pager for each one. His bulging belt would be a very bad look. “Doc, are you putting on weight? Your lab coat is a little tight around the waist.”

That very bad look was not a problem for corporate climbers at Air Products. The more pagers you wore, the more important your job. “The New Orleans people insisted that I keep this pager with me at all times in case something goes wrong down there. The other three pagers are to keep me instantly up to date on my other projects.”

The best thing was that you didn’t have to tell people how important you were, they could see proof clipped to your belt. It was like a chestful of medals on a soldier.

Those corporate climbers are the same folks who would page themselves over the campus-wide PA system so that their name would become better known. “That John Paul Jones must be important. He gets paged all the time.”

The Pager Crew were equally false. After a few drinks at a company function, I asked “What do those pagers connect to?”. “Nothing. I bought them at Radio Shack and never activated them.”

What is a pager? It used to be the ultimate corporate status symbol, kids.

By Ed Dufton

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Lynette Dufton

These posts are written by my father, Ed Dufton, who has an incredible knack of condensing the day’s news into a witty and insightful commentary on society.