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At the end of the 1970s, ATEA was part of GTE, an american multinational company. In those days, GTE was looking to build a cheap telephone for the US consumer market.
Mike Taylor, a British designer working on ATEA came to a brilliant but simple idea for a costreduced phone, which became the flip-phone. He got a GTE award for it.
The phone [designed by an ATEA designer of British origin], got manufactured in the US, and sold in big quantities. GTE was used to design and manufacture high quality phones, good, reliable and rather expensive. The flip-phone became the first GTE phone for the consumer market, sold at a cheaper price, but reliability on the long term was not the main issue.
Here a commercial on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9IMAA73buY
The name "flip-phone" was a trademark of GTE until 1993, currently it seems to be used by several other phone vendors, especially for cellular phones.
Last changed on 29/05/11 by Jan Verhelst