Dan Q<p>On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.</p><p>It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.</p><p>Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.</p><p>It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)</p><p><a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/note" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>note</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>technology</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/nostalgia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>nostalgia</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/wales" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>wales</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/climbing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>climbing</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/walking" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>walking</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/hiking" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>hiking</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/psion" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>psion</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/nokia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>nokia</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/mobiles" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mobiles</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/internet" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>internet</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/email" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>email</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>history</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/telephone" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>telephone</span></a> <a href="https://m.danq.me/tags/telephones" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>telephones</span></a></p><p>Via: 🔗 <a href="https://danq.me/2025/01/31/yr-wyddfas-first-email/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">danq.me/2025/01/31/yr-wyddfas-</span><span class="invisible">first-email/</span></a></p>