How do pagers work?
A pager (sometimes called a beeper) is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then expected to call. Alphanumeric pagers are also available, and two-way ones can send email or SMS messages as well as receiving. Until the popular adoption of mobile phones in the late 1990s, pagers fulfilled the role of common personal and mobile communications. As of 2008, pagers have fallen into obsolescence and are preserved only by niche markets consisting largely of emergency service personnel, medical personnel, and information technology support staff. Paging is a subscription service offered in a variety of plans and options to meet the needs of a subscriber and the type of device used. In general, all pagers are given unique phone numbers while alphanumeric pagers are given an email address, usually consisting of the phone number.
You probably won’t be satisfied if we say “They’re magic,” so here’s what we found on the Web: We searched Yahoo! using the keyword phrase “how things work,” since we suspected that a specific search just using “pagers” would lead us to business listings rather than informational resources. Our general search provided us with two promising sites. The first, How Things Work, run by a physics professor from the University of Virginia, offers detailed answers to user-submitted science questions. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any mention of pagers or paging technology, and after several minutes of fascinated browsing, we moved on. The second site, How Stuff Works, really looked like a winner. Not only had it won a Cool Site of the Year award in 1998, but there were dozens and dozens of illustrated articles explaining the inner workings of everything from car engines to cruise missiles. We did fin
