After seeing early generation Motorola walkie talkies in repeats of Combat and other WWII media, was wondering what range did they have without repeaters? Were they VHF or UHF? Lastly, why didn't police and fire not get them until the late 1960's ? Or were they still not perfected enough for Public Safety users ? Yes I held a heavy HT200 and know why they called it a brick. LOL
I've been around some military personnel (USMC) in the field at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in the Sierra Nevada. They had a packset on low band VHF with AM transmissions. The radio had no squelch so they had to listen to a lot of noise for the entire time the radio was on. It is my impression and I could be wrong that the portables used in WWII didn't have squelch either. So if you read the information rk911 provided the link to you see that they were not on VHF and UHF was way outside anything even dreamed about at the time. They were on a lower portion of HF, or just "High Frequency" not all that much higher than the broadcast radio spectrum.
The dawn of police radio found just receivers in cars. So dispatch just transmitted "in the blind" not knowing if a car heard there transmissions. If possible the officers would stop by at special phones locked up in "Gamewell" boxes located every block or two or three. As for handhelds until the mid 60's portable radios were fairly big, the battery alone being 12-16" long, 6-8" wide and 8-10" high. It wasn't a brick, it was a small suitcase and heavy. Mobiles still had tubes and were in a big box behind the seat of pickups, in trunks of cars and took a lot of power to run. Solid state, crystal tuned handhelds started to be more available in the very late 60's and early 70's. They weren't very cheap either. Repeaters were uncommon. A dispatch center might have a few remote bases linked by telephone lines. I started with the U.S. Forest Service in the early 70's and if we were in a location the remote base on a National Forest could not pick you up on, you had to call a lookout and have them pass along the radio traffic you had by voice repeating what you said. Of course, later repeaters were placed in those lookouts and remote bases were linked by UHF radios. At first there might be multiple repeaters and no way to select only one, so two or more repeaters might transmit your signal. Two signals on FM transmitting at the same time was hard on the ears.
It was the mid to late 70's before handhelds started to be common. Sometimes the number and type of handhelds was a function of what police departments could afford.
I could provide additional observations and the history of radio on wildland fires, but this message is already long enough.
