Depression Era Carphone

Before smart phones, mobile phones, cell phones and even citizens band (CB) radios there were "car phones;" so named because portable phones were so bulky that an automobile was the only practical way to carry them.  Usually, such phones were in limousines, used by the executive passenger while being chauffeured.  As Paleofuture notes, Huge Gernsback advocated for more widespread use of car radios as two-way communication devices as early as 1935.  Radios were becoming more popular in cars, and he proposed making them all capable of two-way communication to provide a means of summoning emergency assistance.