Walkie Talkies

A walkie-talkie (more formally known as a handheld transceiver, or HT) is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald L. Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, and engineering teams at Motorola. First used for infantry, similar designs were created for field artillery and tank units, and after the war, walkie-talkies spread to public safety and eventually commercial and jobsite work.^[1]

A walkie-talkie is a half-duplex communication device; only one radio on the channel can transmit at a time, although any number can listen. The transceiver is normally in receive mode; when the user wants to talk he presses a "push-to-talk" (PTT) switch that turns off the receiver and turns on the transmitter. Typical walkie-talkies resemble a telephone handset, possibly slightly larger but still a single unit, with an antenna mounted on the top of the unit. Where a phone's earpiece is only loud enough to be heard by the user, a walkie-talkie's built-in speaker can be heard by the user and those in the user's immediate vicinity. Hand-held transceivers may be used to communicate between each other, or to vehicle-mounted or base stations.