Lebanon Blast What are pagers How did thousands of devices explode simultaneously

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Lebanon blast : The West Asian country Lebanon is in the news. At least 20 people lost their lives on Tuesday when thousands of wireless gadgets of Hezbollah fighters exploded. Thousands of people were injured. This trend continued on Wednesday as well and many walkie-talkies, laptops, mobile phones, solar panels exploded. According to NDTV report, a senior security source in Lebanon has claimed that Israel’s spy agency Mossad had planted explosives inside the pagers. It is being reported that explosives were planted in about 5 thousand pagers.

What are Pagers?

A pager is a small and portable communication device that can receive and send short messages using radio frequency signals. These messages are usually numeric and alphanumeric. When mobile phones were not popular, pagers were an important tool for communication. It was popular among doctors and journalists.

How do pagers work?

When pagers were used on a large scale, their functioning was easy. Messages are sent through pagers with the help of radio waves, and the person who receives the message hears a beep in his pager. In 1949, American inventor Alfred Gross patented the first pager. However, the word pager was first registered by Motorola in 1959.

Moto made its first pager, named Pageboy 1, in 1964. With time, these also improved and in the 80s, pagers equipped with small screens started coming, in which the message could be seen on the device itself. According to reports, in the year 1994, 6 crore pagers were in use all over the world. With the advent of mobile phones in the 90s, pagers slowly started losing their shine. However, they are still being used today.

Pager in news because of Hezbollah
This device has come into the news after pagers of Hezbollah fighters were targeted in Lebanon. According to reports, Hezbollah fighters use pagers to avoid Israeli tracking. It is being said that Israel’s Mossad had put explosives in about 5000 pagers, which were ordered by Hezbollah a few months ago.