Just recently (September, 2013) I came across this curious item in the Gleaner, in 1884, which certainly reads like some 19th century reference to a cell-phone or mobile phone; indeed the instrument is described as a 'wireless telephone.'
Curious as to the meaning of 'megaphone' in the 1880s, I did some googling and kept coming up with references to Edison's 'megaphone' which he was working on to help the deaf, but was being suggested as a means of communicating across distances, perhaps between ships, for example. Although this could be described, perhaps, as a 'wireless telephone', it was clearly not an instrument one could carry in one's pocket!
Although Edison intended his 'megaphone' as a piece of equipment to assist the deaf, it was also envisaged as a method for people to speak to each other over some distance without the use of wires. Bell's telephone had already evolved out of the use of telegraph wires to transmit the human voice, but now it was possible that there might be ways to develop a 'wireless telephone.'
This image of Edison's 'megaphone' apparently in use, is fairly extraordinary, but the English humorous magazine Punch developed the idea of the 'wireless telephone' to include transmission of images as well as voices!
EDISON'S TELEPHONOSCOPE (TRANSMITS LIGHT AS WELL AS SOUND).
'Every evening, before going to bed, Pater and Materfamilias set up an electric camera-obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece and gladden their eyes with the sight of the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire'.
Paterfamilias (in Wilton Place) "BEATRICE, COME CLOSER - I WANT TO WHISPER."
Beatrice (from Ceylon) "YES ,PAPA DEAR"
Paterfamilias "WHO IS THAT CHARMING YOUNG LADY PLAYING ON CHARLIE'S SIDE?"
Beatrice "SHE'S JUST COME OVER FROM ENGLAND, PAPA. I'LL INTRODUCE YOU TO HER AS SOON AS THE GAME'S OVER."
'Every evening, before going to bed, Pater and Materfamilias set up an electric camera-obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece and gladden their eyes with the sight of the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire'.
Paterfamilias (in Wilton Place) "BEATRICE, COME CLOSER - I WANT TO WHISPER."
Beatrice (from Ceylon) "YES ,PAPA DEAR"
Paterfamilias "WHO IS THAT CHARMING YOUNG LADY PLAYING ON CHARLIE'S SIDE?"
Beatrice "SHE'S JUST COME OVER FROM ENGLAND, PAPA. I'LL INTRODUCE YOU TO HER AS SOON AS THE GAME'S OVER."