Given that my electronic leash is always with me and that ubiquitous pagers and cell phones make doctors reachable 24 hours a day, it's amazing to contemplate a time when a PA system at a hospital was considered new and high tech:
I especially like the part touting the volume control, as if that were some technological wonder that one wouldn't expect on a P.A. system!
Personally, when I see such a system, I can't help but think of the Three Stooges in Men In Black. Of course, when it comes to any paging system, be it a PA system or a pager, there are times when I feel like doing exactly what the Three Stooges did at the end of the short to the PA system that kept repeating, "Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!"
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They still existed about 19 years ago when I was getting my first sonograms for pregnancy #1.
The loudspeaker page that gave us the giggles were for a "Dr. Ballard"... especially since it was in Ballard Community Hospital:
http://www.swedish.org/body.cfm?id=2052
(not terribly far from where PZ Myers child was carded:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/our_friday_itinerary.php )
Amazing how Western Electric had its fingers in everything back then.
If only those blaring television sets in the waiting rooms would go away as well.
What's the date on that?
Click on the picture, and you'll see. ;-)
For duty and humanity!
In the 1980's I worked in an MR center where we still had a loudspeaker paging system. I knew I had to leave there when I was in a supermarket one day, an announcement came on the speaker, and I was straining to hear if it was addressed to me.
"Emergency! Emergency! Paging Dr. Blog!"
"Will the owner of the purple and green Chevrolet Impala please remove it from the doctors' lounge"
[/old "Ben Casey" parody skit]