document_title: Ashes to Ashes

question_text: where does the term ashes to ashes come from

root

text: Ashes to Ashes

text: In religion[edit]

text: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust", a phrase from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer burial service

tag: ul

text: In literature[edit]

text:
Ashes to Ashes (play), by Harold Pinter, 1996
Ashes to Ashes (book), by Richard Kluger, about smoking in the United States, 1996
Ashes to Ashes (novel), by Tami Hoag, 1999

text: In television[edit]

text:
Ashes to Ashes (TV series), a follow-on from the BBC drama Life on Mars
"Ashes to Ashes" (Only Fools and Horses), an episode of Only Fools and Horses
"Ashes to Ashes" (Star Trek: Voyager), an episode of Star Trek: Voyager
"Ashes to Ashes" (CSI: Miami), an episode of CSI: Miami
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, 2006 made-for-television sequel in the Pumpkinhead franchise of horror films
Ashes to Ashes (Columbo), a 1998 television movie
"Ashes to Ashes" (The Originals)

text: In films[edit]

text:
Ashes to Ashes (1966 film), an Australian television play
Ashes to Ashes (1999 film), by Wayne Gerard Trotman

text: Music[edit]

text: Albums[edit]

text:
Ashes to Ashes (soundtrack album), a soundtrack album of the BBC series
Ashes to Ashes (David Shankle Group album)
Ashes to Ashes (Chelsea Grin album)
Ashes to Ashes (mixtape), a 2010 mixtape released by Rick Ross
Ashes to Ashes Live, a 2010 DVD by doom metal act Candlemass
Ashes to Ashes, a 1990 album by Joe Sample

text: Songs[edit]

text:
"Ashes to Ashes" (The 5th Dimension song)
"Ashes to Ashes" (David Bowie song)
"Ashes to Ashes" (Faith No More song)
"Asche zu Asche", Ashes to Ashes in English, a song by Rammstein
"Ashes to Ashes", from Blind Guardian's Somewhere Far Beyond album
"Ashes to Ashes", a 1991 song by the Norwegian band Apoptygma Berzerk
"Ashes to Ashes", by Damageplan featuring Jerry Cantrell from The Punisher: The Album
"Ashes to Ashes", from the Heavenly album Dust to Dust
"Ashes to Ashes", from the Kamelot album Silverthorn
"Ashes to Ashes", from the Steve Earle album Jerusalem
"Ashes to Ashes", from the Tangerine Dream album Electronic Meditation


document_title: Journal of Applied Physics

question_text: journal of applied physics & nanotechnology impact factor

text: Journal of Applied Physics

text:
Journal of Applied Physics
Discipline
PhysicsLanguage
EnglishEdited by
André AndersPublication detailsFormer name(s)
PhysicsPublication history
1931-presentPublisher
American Institute of Physics (United States) Frequency
WeeklyImpact factor(2017)
2.176Standard abbreviationsBluebook (alt1 · alt2) · ISO 4 (alt)NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )ISO 4
J. Appl. Phys.IndexingMIARCODEN
JAPIAUISSN
0021-8979 (print)1089-7550 (web)LCCN
33023425OCLC no.
900973293Links
Journal homepage

tag: table

text: The Journal of Applied Physics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a focus on the physics of modern technology. The journal was originally established in 1931  under the name of Physics, and was published by the American Physical Society for its first 7 volumes. In January 1937, ownership was transferred to the American Institute of Physics "in line with the efforts of the American Physical Society to enhance the standing of physics as a profession".[1] The journal's current editor-in-chief is André Anders (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). According to the 2015 Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2016 impact factor of 2.068.[2]

tag: p


document_title: List of United States standard crochet hook and knitting needle sizes

question_text: what letter is a size 4 crochet hook

question_tokens: what letter is a size 4 crochet hook

text: Accurate knitting needle and crochet hook sizing is important for both crafts. There are, however, no uniform procedures for indicating these measurements.[1]

text: The Craft Yarn Council of America (CYCA), an industry trade association, has collated a table of crochet hook and knitting needle sizes from de facto industrial standards and elicited the cooperation of its member organizations in adopting them to regularize sizing in the United States. The listed gauge systems are also widely used internationally. Their broader applicability is further highlighted by their normalization with the metric system,[2] which the CYCA members have agreed to have appear prominently on their packaging.

text: A hook gauge is used for measuring both knitting needles and crochet hooks. The size of a crochet hook is determined by the diameter of its shaft.[3]

text: Standard knitting needle and crochet hook sizes[edit]

text:
Metric diameter

US Knitting Needle Number

Corresponding Crochet Hook Size

7000225000000000000♠2.25 mm

7000100000000000000♠1

B-1

7000275000000000000♠2.75 mm

7000200000000000000♠2

C-2

7000325000000000000♠3.25 mm

7000300000000000000♠3

D-3

7000350000000000000♠3.5 mm

7000400000000000000♠4

E-4

7000375000000000000♠3.75 mm

7000500000000000000♠5

F-5

7000400000000000000♠4 mm

7000600000000000000♠6

G-6

7000450000000000000♠4.5 mm

7000700000000000000♠7

7

7000500000000000000♠5 mm

7000800000000000000♠8

H-8

7000550000000000000♠5.5 mm

7000900000000000000♠9

I-9

7000600000000000000♠6 mm

7001100000000000000♠10

J-10

7000650000000000000♠6.5 mm

7001105000000000000♠10.5

K-10.5

7000800000000000000♠8 mm

7001110000000000000♠11

L-11

7000900000000000000♠9 mm

7001130000000000000♠13

M/N-13

7001100000000000000♠10 mm

7001150000000000000♠15

N/P-15

7001127500000000000♠12.75 mm

7001170000000000000♠17

—

7001150000000000000♠15 mm

7001190000000000000♠19

P/Q

7001160000000000000♠16 mm

—

Q

7001190000000000000♠19 mm

7001350000000000000♠35

S

7001250000000000000♠25 mm

7001500000000000000♠50

U


document_title: List of Ghost Whisperer characters

question_text: who plays melinda's mother in ghost whisperer

question_tokens: who plays melinda 's mother in ghost whisperer

text: List of Ghost Whisperer characters

text: Main characters[edit]

text:
Actor
Character
Seasons

1
2
3
4
5

Jennifer Love Hewitt
Melinda Gordon
Main

Aisha Tyler
Andrea Marino
Main
Special Guest

David Conrad
Jim Clancy / Sam Lucas
Main

Camryn Manheim
Delia Banks

Main

Jay Mohr
Professor Rick Payne

Recurring
Main
Special Guest

Tyler Patrick Jones / Christoph Sanders
Ned Banks

Recurring
Main

Jamie Kennedy
Professor Eli James

Main

Connor Gibbs
Aiden Lucas

Main

text: Melinda Gordon[edit]

text: Melinda Gordon, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, is the protagonist of Ghost Whisperer. Melinda has been able to see ghosts since she was a little girl. Specifically, she sees ghosts who have not crossed over due to an issue that they need her help to resolve. She helps them find peace and cross over into the light. The gift has been passed on for many generations. She is married to Jim Clancy (David Conrad) and owns an antique shop, located in the fictional town of Grandview. She has many enemies who dislike her abilities, including Gabriel Lawrence (Ignacio Serricchio) and Romano (John Walcutt).

text: Andrea Marino[edit]

text:
Andrea Marino

First appearance
"Pilot"
1x01, September 23, 2005

Last appearance
"Love Never Dies"
2x01, September 29, 2006

Created by
John Gray

Portrayed by
Aisha Tyler

Information

Nickname(s)
Andie, Squeaky

Occupation
Lawyer
Co-owned antique store

Family
Mitch Marino (brother)
Maya Marino (sister-in-law)
Unnamed nieces

text: Andrea Joyce Marino,[1] played by Aisha Tyler, is Melinda's (Jennifer Love Hewitt) best friend and was part of the main cast during season one. Andrea once worked in New York City, as a lawyer, until she moved to Grandview. She set up an antique store that she owns along with Melinda named "The Same As It Never Was".

text: Melinda even comes to trust Andrea enough to tell her about her gift of being able to communicate with earthbound spirits, or ghosts. Andrea becomes essential to the store and Melinda, because of the very fact she knows about Melinda's gift. Whenever Melinda has to run off and help a ghost, Andrea is left to keep the store. Andrea also helps Melinda with difficult crossovers removing some of the stress from Melinda's husband, Jim (David Conrad). In "The One", a plane crashes and Andrea notices Melinda is hiding something. She believes her brother Mitch died during the plane crash and Melinda is seeing his ghost.

text: At the end of season one, it was revealed it was Andrea who had died during the crash and not Mitch. While Andrea was not on the plane, she died because her car had been on the path the plane had crashed on. Romano attempts to prevent Andrea from crossing over into the Light and get her to join him on the Dark Side. Melinda would not allow such a horrific occurrence to happen to her friend, so she sets out to stop Romano and warn Andrea. With the help of an occult professor at Rockland University, Rick Payne, Melinda is able to help Andrea find peace and cross over into the Light. Her death was foreshadowed in Season 1, Episode 15. Romano is seen sitting in a chair in the antique store. When he disappears, a faint sound of an airplane engine is heard.

text: Andrea is later mentioned in "Drowned Lives", "A Grave Matter", "Delia's First Ghost" and "The Prophet". Also, while having been successfully crossed over into the Light for over a year, two ghosts taunt Melinda by calling her Andrea during "Bad Blood".

text: In the season four episode, "Leap of Faith", when Jim swims to rescue Melinda and hits his head, he has flashbacks of his past as Jim, and Andrea can be seen briefly when remembering his wedding with Melinda. Andrea's date of death is in the book of changes backwards and was mentioned before a flashback of the plane crash which killed her.

text: Jim Clancy[edit]

text:
Jim Clancy

First appearance
"Pilot"
1x01, September 23, 2005

Last appearance
The Children's Parade
5x22, May 21, 2010

Created by
John Gray

Portrayed by
David Conrad

Information

Aliases
Sam Lucas

Occupation
Paramedic/Firefighter, Doctor

Family
Faith Clancy (mother)
Aiden Clancy (father; deceased)
Daniel 'Dan' Clancy (brother; deceased)

Spouse(s)
Melinda Gordon
(m. 2005-2009; his death)
Melinda Gordon
(m. 2009-present)

Children
Unnamed child
(miscarriage, with Melinda)
Aiden Lucas
(son, with Melinda)

text: Jim Clancy, played by David Conrad is Melinda's (Jennifer Love Hewitt) husband. He is the only cast member other than Hewitt to appear in every episode.

text: Jim and Melinda get married and move in at the start of the first season. Jim was a paramedic and firefighter, and the two met when he rescued her from her apartment complex, which had a structural issue. Jim knew of Melinda's unique ability to communicate with ghosts at the start of the series; he helped her as much as he could, though Melinda's good friend, Andrea Marino, provided most of the aid until her death at the end of the first season. It was revealed in the pilot episode that Jim witnessed his older brother, Dan, die when they were young. After having seen Dan die and being unable to save him, Jim decides to become a paramedic. Dan attended Jim and Melinda's wedding as a ghost and conversed with Melinda during the reception.

text: After Melinda's near death experience during the season two finale, "The Gathering", Jim becomes worried about what else could happen to Melinda because of the ghosts. Jim also helps try to find information about Melinda's father (Tom Gordon), who might or might not be dead, as well as try to find any information about Melinda's brother, Gabe. In "Haunted Hero", Jim and Melinda welcome a returning soldier from Iraq, Matt, back to Grandview. When Matt becomes paranoid due to being haunted by his dead comrades and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jim confronts Matt in the town square and talks Matt out of trying to kill himself. Jim delivered some of his convincing argument with Matt's gun pointed at him.

text: In "Weight of What Was", Gabriel returns to Grandview and Jim warns him away, though not before Gabriel reveals that he is Melinda's half-brother. Jim, Rick, and Delia go in search of Melinda, who is trapped in old Grandview, which is buried under present day Grandview. Tessa, the ghost of Melinda's maternal ancestor who was also a Ghost Whisperer, helps them find Melinda by communicating with Delia and Jim. Jim also begins thinking of moving out of Grandview to attend medical school. At first, Melinda does not like the idea, but she later agrees to it. In "Deadbeat Dads", Jim admits he would like to have children someday; Jim and Melinda try to get pregnant and succeed, but Melinda loses the baby.

text: Near the end of "Imaginary Friends and Enemies", Jim is shot in the shoulder and rushed to the hospital, where he is immediately taken into surgery. Relieved to hear his surgery went well, Melinda is taken to his room and asks if she may stay with him until he awakens. It is implied she waits several hours, and she eventually falls asleep next to him. She wakes up to find Jim next to her, and believing him to be awake, she tells him she loves him. When Jim tells her softly he suffered an embolism; Melinda tries to get a doctor, but Jim tells her not to and says that he wants her to remember him as he is now. This causes Melinda to realize Jim is appearing to her as a ghost; his body then flatlines in the background. As doctors rush in to revive him, Melinda tearfully pleads with Jim for it not be him. Jim then says, "I will always love you, Melinda", and then his ghost disappears as Melinda sobs and the doctors are unable to revive him. His death was foreshadowed in the season premiere, when a ghost warned Melinda death might rub off on those she loves.

text: Jim refuses to cross over because he still loves Melinda and believes their love is what is holding him back. Even though Melinda wants Jim to stay, she knows it's selfish of her and begs him to go into the light, promising she'll be there one day. But when Jim and Melinda witness paramedics trying to revive a motorcycle accident victim named Sam Lucas, they see the ghost of the victim go into the light. Jim goes over to the body and tells Melinda it's the only way. Before Melinda can stop him, Jim's ghost enters Sam's body, thus bringing him back to "life." However, the viewers continue to see him as Jim while everyone else in the show including Melinda sees him as Sam. When Melinda says "You're back", Jim, who now believes he is Sam and has no memory as Jim, says "Do I know you?" This leads Melinda to try to prove to him who he really is, especially when pieces of Jim's memory start to show. At first, he thinks she's crazy and doesn't believe her. When Melinda is trapped underground, Jim goes to save her, but he hits his head and he has flashes of memories as Jim, thus bringing Jim fully back. When he finds Melinda, she calls him Sam to which Jim replies "Why are you calling me Sam?" Melinda then realizes Jim is back and she happily hugs him.

text: Later on, Melinda finds out she is pregnant again and it turns out Jim had gotten her pregnant shortly before he died. Later Melinda begins to worry about their unborn baby. She began to have nightmares and visions the baby was in danger. She was sure by the things she was being told the baby was a girl after Melinda runs into the faceless child again, who puts her hand on Melinda's tummy and says, "You can't save her. You can't." Jim reveals to Melinda he had seen her chart accidentally and knew it was a boy, although he knew they agreed not to find out, but he told her to ease her mind, so she’d see her visions and dreams were wrong. Jim and Melinda marry again at the same place they met - in front of witnesses, Eli James (best man) and Delia Banks (matron of honor), and a full gathering of spirits.

text: In Season 5, Melinda believes her due date is the exact date in the book, which causes doubts in Jim and the rest of the characters (Delia, Ned, and Eli). Melinda finally needs an emergency C-Section. When the baby suddenly goes into fetal distress in the operating room, the season’s first ghosts appear to Melinda. First the watcher, who warned Melinda of her child’s power and the danger he may come into, stops time to tell her Fate and Free Will will work together to decide whether or not the baby will live. The second ghost comes in the form of a young woman in a white gown. She quickly disappears and time restarts. While the baby isn’t breathing at first, he suddenly recovers to full health. Later in recovery, Melinda tells Jim they’ll name the baby Aiden Lucas, in honor of Jim’s father and Sam Lucas.

text: The series then jumps ahead to 2014 and the celebration of Aiden's upcoming fifth birthday. Jim is now a resident at Rockland Memorial Teaching Hospital, as Jim, and he takes the name Jim as his middle name. Ned is also in college, taking classes with Eli, while Delia has become a big realtor. There were always problems every year on Aiden's birthday. He would become strangely sick, for example. Every year a woman would visit Aiden and sing him happy birthday. The woman, Amber, had died in childbirth the night Melinda gave birth to Aiden. Amber was convinced her son’s spirit had jumped into Aiden, as he had stopped breathing shortly after he was born. Later on in the episode, it is revealed the son was actually adopted by the birth father and his wife.

text: Melinda helps Amber into the light and learns from the watcher that Aiden is an empath. He feels and takes on emotions of those around him. This is revealed as the reason why each year Amber would show up and he gets sick. Melinda also finds out she shares a psychic link with Aiden, which allows them to communicate with one another, though he doesn’t fully understand it. Melinda and Jim decide to not tell Aiden, because they want him to have a normal life, with his own dreams. In 5.19 "Lethal Combination", Jim is caught by Dr. Mavis, a morgue coroner, snooping through the files in the hospital morgue.

text: Delia Banks[edit]

text:
Delia Banks

First appearance
"Love Still Won't Die"
2x02, September 29, 2006

Last appearance
"The Children's Parade"
5x22, May 21, 2010

Portrayed by
Camryn Manheim

Information

Gender
Female

Spouse(s)
Charlie Banks (deceased)

Children
Ned Banks

text: Delia Banks (portrayed by Camryn Manheim) joined the main cast of Ghost Whisperer at the start of season 2. She and her teenage son, Ned, lost their husband and father, Charlie, three years prior to their appearance on the show. Delia became a real estate agent after Charlie's death.

text: Delia meets Melinda Gordon after Melinda calls Delia about Ned's having tried to shoplift from Melinda's antique store. Delia tells Melinda about how stressful her job as a real estate agent is, so Melinda offers her a job to help work at the antique store, which Delia accepts. They begin a friendship, though Delia does not know about Melinda's gift at first. In the episode "Delia's First Ghost", Melinda has to tell Delia about her gift because Charlie's spirit is haunting her. At first Delia calls Melinda crazy, admitting she had seen Melinda talking to herself and was worried. Delia even goes as far as to tell Melinda not to expect her at work again. By the end of the episode Delia learns, with Melinda's help, Charlie is only haunting her because he wants her to be safe. While still a little skeptical of Melinda's gift, Delia tells her that she will open the shop the next morning.

text: Delia remains skeptical concerning Melinda's gift in season three, but discusses the various ghosts Melinda encounters to help Melinda with them. When Melinda was stalked by a lawyer, Shane, he tampered with Ned's records because Delia was trying to get him into private school. Nevertheless, when Shane was caught with Ned's records, Ned got in. In episode 5, "Weight of What Was", Delia travels along with Jim and Rick into a series of underground tunnels and alleyways from a much older Grandview to find Melinda. With the help of a ghost named Tessa, they manage to locate her and get her to safety. In "Bad Blood", Delia's need to find a rational explanation for every situation, including ones involving ghosts, is brought up. Delia tells Melinda that she will try harder to accept the notion of ghosts. In the episode "Heart and Soul", Delia's need for a rational explanation nearly destroys her relationship with Melinda, but a conversation with her son and a moment with "Sam" at a basketball court provides her with faith in Melinda's gift. She now believes Jim is living in Sam's body. Sometime within the five-year leap between seasons 4 and 5 she left working for Melinda to open a Real Estate agency next to the shop, however she is frequently seen helping Melinda in the shop at various points in the series and remains Melinda's best friend.

text: Ned Banks[edit]

text: Ned Banks was originally portrayed by Tyler Patrick Jones, but starting with season 3 episode "Slambook!" Christoph Sanders took over the role. Ned is a nice guy who has dedicated his life to helping Melinda with the occult. He is the son of Delia and Charlie Banks. The events of his adolescence have been part of the plots of some episodes.

text: Ned was caught shoplifting at Melinda's antique shop, stealing Grateful Dead backstage passes. Melinda realized his behavior was the result of a spirit's urging. Ned found out Melinda's secret before his mother did when he overheard Melinda in the episode "Curse of the Ninth." He is always eager to help Melinda with her ghosts. A few episodes later, when his deceased father Charlie visits him and his mother, Melinda helps his father go into the Light. In the season three episode "No Safe Place," Ned gets into a private school.

text: In "Slambook," Ned (played by Christoph Sanders from then on) is on the basketball team when a ghost begins tampering with the scoreboard. In the episode "Home But Not Alone," Ned has his first girlfriend and (probably) his first kiss. In season 4, there was a plot which involved his mother suspecting him of smoking marijuana, but as it turned out, it was his mother's friend's joint. As of season five, he is a student at Rockland University. In "Dead Air" he is a host of a radio show, and has cheated on his girlfriend TJ (which he later regrets and apologizes for).

text: In season 5, Ned is studying Anthropology of the Occult at Rockland University. He uses his knowledge to help Melinda and Eli solve the mystery of the Shadows and Shinies, also aiding them in crossing over spirits. Ned, Melinda, and Eli take turns keeping the Book of Changes.

text: Rick Payne[edit]

text:
Richard "Rick" Payne

First appearance
"Love Never Dies"
2x01, September 22, 2006 (As recurring cast)
"The Underneath"
3x01, September 28, 2007 (As main cast)

Last appearance
"Firestarter"
4x01, October 3, 2008

Portrayed by
Jay Mohr

Information

Nickname(s)
Rick, Ricky, Payne

Gender
Male

Occupation
Professor at Rockland University

Spouse(s)
Kate Payne (wife; deceased)

text: Rick Payne (portrayed by Jay Mohr) is a professor at Rockland University. He is a widower; his wife, Kate, died in a crane accident before his first appearance in the series.

text: At the beginning of season two, Melinda Gordon first seeks Rick Payne's help to save her deceased friend, Andrea Marino, who is being attacked by a dark spirit, Romano. She finds him teaching an occult class at Rockland University. She continues to seek Rick's help for various paranormal occurrences throughout the rest of the season. Rick first meets Melinda's husband, Jim Clancy, when Melinda recommends Jim talk to him about a ghost. It is in "The Night We Met" that Rick first questions Melinda about whether or not she believes she has supernatural abilities, as well as meets Melinda's close friend and co-worker, Delia Banks. It is only in the episode "Cat's Claw" that Melinda finally informs Rick of her abilities. In the season finale, Rick and Melinda are seen working very closely trying to figure out who Gabriel Lawrence, a dark Ghost Whisperer, really is. Rick, Jim, and Melinda go as far as breaking into Gabriel's home. It is also revealed Rick's wife, Kate, is a ghost who worked for the dark side but would later cross over into the Light after telling her husband a secret she had been keeping from him since she died.

text: The character joins the main cast in season three. At the beginning of this season, Rick appears to be worried about Melinda after her near-death experience. He also works a large deal more with Melinda on some things. In "The Weight of What Was", Rick, Jim, and Delia all travel into old Grandview to try finding Melinda. Jim and Delia are aided by a ghost named Tessa, an ancestor of Melinda's, and locate the trapped Melinda. Rick also helps Melinda search town death records for information about Tessa, who at the time Melinda believed to be Gabriel's mother, though a group of ghosts attempt to stop them from finding anything. In "Double Exposure", Rick's date and co-worker, Claudia, is haunted by a ghost who makes it so she cannot appear in any pictures.

text: It seems Rick had somewhat of a crush on Melinda when they first met; he was clearly embarrassed by everything he said to her, afraid it might sound stupid. The crush dissipated after he met Jim, Melinda's husband, but they remain very close friends.

text: Abrasive at times, Professor Rick Payne is often perceived as obnoxious on first impression, but most of the time he means well. Sarcastic and sometimes insensitive, he has a tendency to shout randomly and hates to be awakened by late night telephone calls. Even though he does not appreciate the title, he is rather well known as a genius, and spouts useless information at times. He has admitted that he talks a lot when he is nervous, but he talks a lot whether he is nervous or not. Professor Payne is quick-witted and highly intelligent, taking delight in annoying people and considers the reactions he gets from being rude amusing. He feels that he is taken for granted too often and likes to tell people so, though some believe it is only a technique to make others feel sorry for him. He has a certain charm, despite his ability to annoy even those with saintly amounts of patience, and he is a good friend to those who can stand to stick with him.

text: Eli James[edit]

text:
Eli James

First appearance
"Firestarter"
4x01, October 3, 2008

Last appearance
"The Children's Parade"
5x22, May 21, 2010

Portrayed by
Jamie Kennedy

Information

Gender
Male

Occupation
Professor at Rockland University, therapist

Family
Ray James (father; deceased)
Evelyn James (mother; deceased)
Zoe Ramos (girlfriend; deceased)

text: Eli James (Jamie Kennedy) was introduced in the first episode of season four.

text: During a building fire on the Rockland University campus on October 3, 2008, he died but was brought back, causing him to have a near death experience. It unlocked an ability which allows him to hear ghosts, but doesn't allow him to see them like Melinda. Throughout the fourth season, he adjusts to his newfound ability and starts helping her cross ghosts over. Eli also helps Melinda when she needs information from the Police.

text: Zoe, previous Guardian of the Book of Changes and Eli's ex-girlfriend, died after falling off the stairs in an attempt to stop a thief influenced by a Watcher. At the end of Season 4, Zoe crossed into the light (or so it seems) after telling Eli he was the next Guardian of the Book of Changes. In Season 5, it is revealed Eli is one of Ned's university lecturers. Evelyn, Eli's mother, died 7 years ago, even though in "Stage Fright" he told Melinda and Jim he was getting an autograph for his mom who watches the show which was visiting Grandview. Eli's father, Ray James, died from a heart-attack in the third episode of Season 5, "Till Death Do Us Start," which shared more shocking secrets about Eli's parents.

text: Eli and Melinda over time become very close friends. At first, Eli thought that Melinda was crazy (as almost everyone always does when she shares about her gift) until he realized he could do the same thing (almost). As he learns more about his gift, he becomes more and more willing to help Melinda with the hauntings and even enjoys it.

text: Aiden Lucas[edit]

text: Aiden Lucas (portrayed by Connor Gibbs) is the son of Melinda Gordon and Jim Clancy. Aiden is also the grandson of Paul Eastman and Beth Gordon who are Melinda's parents and Aiden and Faith Clancy who are Jim's parents.

text: Aiden was born on September 25, 2009. Before his birth, the watchers predict him and tell Melinda that her son is the key if the ghost's balances shift, and he will be more powerful than she is. On the day of his birth, Melinda worries about her son's fate. During his birth, Melinda needs an emergency C-section and Aiden suddenly goes into fetal distress in the operating room. First, the watcher (Carl) warned Melinda of her child’s power and the danger he may come into, stops time to tell her Fate and Free Will will work together to decide whether or not the baby will live. He quickly disappears and time restarts. While the baby is not breathing at first, he suddenly recovers to full health. Later in recovery, Melinda tells Jim they will name the baby Aiden Lucas, after Jim’s father and the late Sam Lucas.

text: Years later, the family is celebrating Aiden's upcoming fifth birthday. Every year on his birthday something bad happens; Aiden strangely gets sick or something happens to Melinda or Jim. Delia and Melinda call it a birthday curse. However, Aiden is actually haunted by the ghost of the woman who died during childbirth when Melinda gave birth to Aiden. The woman believes Aiden is the spirit of her dead son and she haunts Aiden every year on his birthday.

text: Melinda discovers this and finds out the ghost's son, Tyler, is actually alive and safe with his real father and adoptive mother, Aiden saved Tyler earlier in a bowling accident and Melinda helped the woman go into the light. Later, Carl reveals to Melinda that Aiden is an empath and can feel other people's emotions; he would get sick on his birthday and something went wrong with his birth because of the ghost.

text: In addition to being an empath, Aiden is able to see and communicate with ghosts like his mother and grandparents do, and he is psychically connected to Melinda. Melinda does not tell Aiden this because she wants him to have a normal life.

text: Aiden is able to see things Melinda can't, namely the Shinies (which Aiden refers to as "faceless" and made of "light") and the Shadows, which can be defeated easily by the Shinies, but the Shinies are too afraid of them to do so.

text: Supporting characters[edit]

text: Beth Gordon[edit]

text: Beth Gordon (portrayed by Anne Archer), Melinda's mother and Aiden's grandmother, has the ability to communicate with ghosts, but chooses not to. She never came to terms with her mother or Melinda when it came to their gifts and prefers not to speak of anything that has to do with ghosts, or her husband Tom Gordon. Before she met Tom, she was in a relationship with a man named Paul Eastman, whom she was having a baby with when he went to jail. Once he died, Beth married Tom and never told Melinda about her real father. In "Pater Familias", Paul convinces Beth to tell Melinda the truth. She is then invited to watch the tall ships come into the harbor with Melinda, Jim and their friends, Rick, Delia, and Ned. She appeared in the episodes "Melinda's First Ghost", "The Vanishing", "The Underneath", and "Pater Familias".[2]

text: Mary Ann Patterson[edit]

text: Mary Ann, (played by June Squibb) - Melinda's grandmother and Aiden's great grandmother, now deceased, was a person who spoke to ghosts. It was she who gave lost spirits the title "earthbound." She helped them cross over into the Light (Heaven). Her gift was passed down to Melinda, the current "ghost whisperer." Mary Ann crossed over into the Light so she is currently a "Light" Spirit. She helps Melinda bring ghosts to peace through dreams in two episodes: "Voices" and "The Gathering". It is later revealed, in Season 3, that Melinda's maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Tessa (Amy Acker), could also communicate with ghosts and Melinda helps her cross over. When Melinda tells Tessa the fate of her daughter (in "Weight of What Was"), it is revealed that Mary Anne was the granddaughter of Julie Lee Lucas. Her married name was Patterson, according to Melinda. Melinda was in high school when her grandmother died and Melinda did not realize it until her grandmother said something about presence and then it dawned on Melinda that her grandmother was talking about her death and Melinda's loss of her grandmother.

text: Romano[edit]

text: Romano (John Walcutt), also known as "Wide Brim" (due to his outfit: black suit and black hat) was an American evil cult leader who lived in Spain, and who committed suicide along with 100 followers in 1939. The energy of the mass suicide made him powerful and strong, and he went to the Dark Side. He can be considered Melinda's true archenemy. He started to trick souls to go with him, by making them refuse to "cross over" into The Light.

text: When Romano first appeared on the show, his appearances were quick and mysterious, and he was usually attached to a laughing man who had, theretofore, never spoken. He always seemed to be observing Melinda. When in the episode "The One", the final episode of season one, a plane crashes outside Grandview, he attempts to gather all of the lost souls from the accident. This is the first time he declares his hatred and rivalry to Melinda, and he says he would release all "his earthbound souls" in exchange for her one soul.

text: Romano and Melinda confront each other verbally, each using persuasive speeches directed to the souls from the plane crash. Finally, Romano manages to get at least seven of the souls, including a stewardess who later does go into the Light in season two.

text: In "Love Never Dies", season two episode one, Romano tries to prevent Melinda's friend Andrea from crossing over into The Light. Melinda gathers all her strength to make Andrea cross over, and she learns with the help of Professor Rick Payne the identity of Romano. Payne also warns Melinda about Romano's real purpose: to destroy good spirits (the ones in charge of helping souls to "cross over" into The Light, such as Melinda) in order to make the dead stronger than the living, and to be endlessly powerful. According to Payne, Dark Spirit Romano would literally take over a weak soul in a weak body to make too much harm to humanity, until the last trace of joy and happiness vanished from earth. It is impossible for Romano to get closer when Melinda helps spirits to "cross over" into The Light, because there is too much love, and love is what Romano hates.

text: Romano last appeared in season two, episode one, when he was unsuccessful in trying to possess Andrea's soul. However, mid-season two, Melinda seems to foreshadow Romano's comeback, when Delia Banks tries on a black hat which resembles Romano's, although nothing arises from this. Melinda loosely references Romano in an episode of season five; when discussing the Shadows, she mentions that she's seen similar ghosts before, ones which didn't "cross over, so much as "cross under" much like Romano does with his followers. This reference could tell viewers that Romano ultimately became a Shadow after Andrea crossed over, and this is why he does not appear to Melinda for the rest of the series.

text: Charlie Banks[edit]

text: Delia was married to Charlie Banks (Frederic Lehne) until he died three years prior to Delia's first appearance on the show. They had a loving relationship. After a fire at the place where Charlie worked, Charlie was said to be different and more of a family man. We also learn that it was Tim who saved Charlie's life. Together with Charlie, Delia had her twelve-year-old son, Ned.[3] Charlie died after being shot.

text: Tim Flaherty[edit]

text: In the episode "The Walk-In", Tim Flaherty (Thomas Wilson), a friend and co-worker of Jim's, is trying to get Delia to go out on a date with him, something Delia refuses to do. In "Delia's First Ghost", Tim tries to get Jim to tell him what Delia likes so he can impress her. Charlie, Delia's dead husband, helps him by knocking over a pot of lavender roses Delia likes. Tim also buys a motorcycle exactly like the one Charlie used to have. At the end of the episode, they are seen walking away hand in hand. He reappears in the fourth season in the episode Threshold. He is at Jim's funeral and talks about Jim before turning on an iPod with rock music which he says Jim would have wanted.[4]

text: Gabriel Lawrence[edit]

text: Gabriel Lawrence (Ignacio Serricchio) claims to be Melinda's half-brother. He is also a "ghost whisperer". It is unclear who he inherited this gift from, since none of his parents have that gift. When he was a child, Gabriel knew he could interact with the dead, but nobody believed him, and he received psychiatric treatment in a mental health institution. Gabriel never had a living friend. In fact, all of his friends were dead, and he always hated watching them "cross over" into The Light. He managed to get out of the mental health institution by lying. He was in the same mental health institution his mother resided in.

text: In "The Collector" episode, Gabriel is now in his late twenties, and he has recently moved to Grandview. He mentions Grandview always brings him memories. Melinda Gordon has the opportunity to meet him, and she is amazed by the gift they have in common. Melinda warns Gabriel about a shift in the "other world": ghosts are becoming stronger. She tells him how she struggled against a very dark spirit called Romano the year before, when a plane crashed in Grandview.

text: However, Melinda discovers she was naive to believe in Gabriel, who had invited her to work with him in the difficult task of dealing with ghosts. Gabriel turns out to be a Ghost Whisperer from the Dark Side, and he had been gathering souls to get prepare for what "was coming", a complex prophecy of the death of a "loved one".

text: Gabriel, along with the dark spirits, was blocking The Light, because he was trying to make the dead stronger than the living. When Melinda, Jim Clancy, and Rick Payne break into Gabriel's house, they find out Gabriel's obsession with Melinda. He had been observing her moves for quite a long time. At the end of season two, both Gabriel and Melinda struggle against each other for the fate of living and dead.

text: Gabriel returns to Grandview in the third season episode "Weight of What Was", informing Melinda he is her half-brother. He hands her a package containing images of her father's family. An image in the package, in fact from Melinda's mother's past, leads Melinda to an underground church and her great-great-great grandmother, Tessa. A ghost which haunts the archives of Grandview tells Gabriel that Melinda has entered the tunnel, and Gabriel blocks the exit, preventing Melinda from escaping the way she entered. The episode ends with Gabriel speaking to Tom Gordon about what seems like a plan to get Melinda to help ghosts in a dark way. While in Grandview, he resided in a hotel under the name Gabriel Gordon. Gabriel also appears in "All Ghosts Lead to Grandview", wherein he has a brief conversation with Melinda at the end of the episode.

text: Thomas Gordon[edit]

text: Thomas "Tom" Gordon (Martin Donovan) first appears in the plot in season two's finale, although he has previously appeared in some flashbacks. When Melinda "dies" in season two's finale, she confronts what appears to be an already dead Tom, who tells her she is ready to find the darkness within herself, and also tells her she has a brother, later revealed to be Gabriel. In season three, Tom has contact with both Melinda and Gabriel, manifesting himself in Melinda's dreams, and speaking as a ghost with Gabriel. It has been suggested Tom is part of the Dark Side, and he is developing a plan to get Melinda into the Dark Side.

text: In the penultimate episode of season three, however, Tom is found alive in Gabriel's home. Melinda later learns every time she had seen Tom's "ghost", his body had in fact been taken over by Paul Eastman, when he was trying to kill Tom. Melinda then finds out Tom actually is not her father, Paul Eastman is. After discovering this shocking truth, Melinda goes to the main square in town to think, where Tom meets her. He asks her to come back to the house she grew up in. There he gets her to go back through her memories to the night Paul Eastman had come to their house. Just then Melinda realizes Tom is actually a cold-blooded killer; she remembers Tom deliberately murdering Paul Eastman. Tom then informs her that he now has to kill her to keep his secret safe. As he tries to choke her to death, Melinda cries out to her dad, to which Tom answers, "I'm not your Dad". Melinda replies she wasn't talking to Tom but actually was asking for help from her real father. Paul Eastman then arrives and takes over Tom's body one last time, forcing him to throw himself over the staircase, effectively killing him. Soon afterwards he appears before Melinda. Tom is then pulled away by an unknown force to an unknown location.[5]

text: Paul Eastman[edit]

text: Paul Eastman (Corin Nemec) first appears in Melinda's dreams as someone who haunted her and/or wanted to haunt her. She soon discovers that he was an escaped prisoner accused of killing a child whose ghost Melinda was attempting to cross over. However, before he crosses over, the boy admits that his death was an accident, and that he had spoken to Eastman as a ghost to lead him to his body. This led to his wrongful incarceration. In the season 3 finale, it is revealed he is Melinda's biological father, not Tom Gordon. Paul set a series of "clues" to help Melinda see the truth. To quicken the process and save Melinda, he convinces her mother to tell Melinda the truth. Melinda is initially in disbelief and consoled by Tom, who convinces her to follow him to a safe place. The "safe" place is Melinda's childhood home and Paul Eastman's burial site. Once they arrive, Tom probes Melinda about her memory of Paul's death; she eventually has a flashback revealing Tom deliberately killed Paul. Tom decided he must kill Melinda to protect himself from the truth being revealed. Melinda cries out to her dad, to which Tom replies: "Don't call me Dad. I'm not your Father." Melinda answers, "I wasn't talking to you." As Tom realizes who Melinda had been calling to, Paul enters Tom's body and forces him to fall to his death. Paul talks to Melinda and her mother and says he thought that he would never be so angry with his former lover, and only hearing his daughter calling for her dad made all of his anger disappear. He then went into The Light. He has one grandson by Melinda, Aiden. In life, he apparently had the ability to speak to ghosts just like Melinda and her maternal relations, meaning that Melinda received her ability from both parents.[6]

text: Zoe Ramos[edit]

text: Zoe Ramos (Jaclyn DeSantis) is Eli's ex-girlfriend and a professor at Rockland University. She knows a lot about the supernatural, because she teaches a course entitled the "Science of the Occult." Zoe and Eli had broken up because at the time he didn't share her beliefs regarding ghosts, life after death, etc. At the end of the fourth season, Eli decides to resume contact with her. Zoe helps Melinda and Eli with cases involving voodoo and vampirism (episodes "Cursed" and "Endless Love").

text: In season four's finale, Eli observes Zoe having lunch with a lawyer, Jeremy Bishop, and becomes very jealous. When Eli attempts the theft of an ancient book from the library of the University, Zoe tells him the true value of the book, which she has studied. Eli decides to invite Zoe out for dinner. When she fails to appear, Eli goes to Zoe's house and finds her dead. Her spirit tells Eli she died from falling down the stairs while a thief, influenced by a Watcher, entered her house to put the Book there.

text: After securing the Book, Eli calls to Zoe, who informs him about the Other Side. She tells him that she was the "Guardian of the Book of Changes" and, henceforth, he will need to take care of the Book. Eli agrees and realizes he still loves Zoe. After saying goodbye to Eli, Zoe goes into the light.[7]

text: Spirits[edit]

text: Characters that appear as spirit guest stars:

text:
Season
Ep
Name(Actor)
Death Cause
Status
Notes

Pre-deceased
Mary Ann (June Squibb)
Natural Causes
Crossed over
Melinda's grandmother, seen in several episodes. (flashback)

Romano
Mass-suicide through cyanide-laced punch
Lost spirit/Shadow
Dead pre-Ghost Whisperer. American expatriate in Spain.

Web episode
Zach
Crashes his bike and hits his head on a piece of debris
Crossed over
Crossed over in season 3 episode 16.

Season 1
1
Paul Adams (Wentworth Miller)
Died when his helicopter crashed into a waterfall
Crossed over

2
Kenny Dale (Joseph Castanon)
Train crashed into the car
Shiny
Was a little boy that didn't understand he was dead.

3
Zoe Harper (Jessica Collins)
Drowned in a lake
Crossed over
Zoe stayed to watch over her sister.

4
Conor Donovan (Sean Maher)
Crashes his bike and hits his head on a rock
Crossed over
Conor stayed to watch over his girlfriend

5
Rat (Lorenzo James Henrie )
Vic (Max Jansen Weinstein)
Marty (Terrence Hardy Jr.)
Homer (Ghost Dog)
All burned to death in a fire
Shiny
Shiny
Shiny
Did not cross over
Rat doesn't want to cross over because he blames himself for the deaths of the other boys.
Vic and Marty follow rat
Stays with Melinda and Jim as their pet ghost-dog. Seen in several episodes, last seen in Season 2.

6
Jason Shields (John Patrick Amedori)
Anaphylaxis due to multiple hornet stings
Crossed over
Jason wanted to meet his biological mom.

7
Hope Paulson (Erica Leerhsen )
Complications from an ectopic pregnancy
Crossed over

8
Julian Borgia (Robert LaSardo)
Robert Hall (G-Man)
Alexis' Aunt Ruth
Vehicular homicide
Shot and killed by police
Natural causes
Crossed over
Lost Spirit
Crossed over
First case of a spirit communicating through Melinda's husband
Died 1963
Reappeared to let Melinda know an emerald necklace was buried with her.

9
Lacy Jensen (Colleen Flynn)
Electrocuted when she fell down a pit
Crossed over
Lacy didn't cross over because she was worried about her son.

10
Serena Hilliard (Laura Regan)
Josh/Best man (David Lipper)
Car went off the road and crashed into tree
Crossed over
Crossed over

11
Estella de La Costa (Sonia Braga)
Inoperable brain tumor
Crossed over

12
Marty Golden (Jed Rees)
Numerous Ghosts
Suicide through jumping off a bridge
Numerous deaths
Crossed over
Stayed at the Comedy Cave.

13
Lyle Chase (Jonathan Banks)
Heart attack
Crossed over
He was searching for his granddaughter's killer.

14
Clete Youngblood (Liam Waite)
Execution by hanging
Crossed over

15
Sarah Applewhite (Abigail Breslin)
Glioma (cancer of the brain's glia cells)
Shiny
Melinda's classmate and first ghost she saw.

16
Dennis McMartin (Matt Keeslar)
Dr. Bob Norris (Josh Daugherty)
Dennis' and Charlie's Father (Michael Fairman)
Fell off a mountain; died in the hospital
Unknown
Heart attack
Crossed over
Crossed over
Crossed over
Andrea's friend
Died two years before; was haunting the hospital.

17
Daniel Greene (David Dorfman)
Reggie Zuko (Scott Rinker)
Car crash after car was hit and slammed into guard rail
Brain tumor
Crossed over
Lost spirit
Appeared in several episodes and seen at the end of Season 2.

18
Edward Pierce (Jonathan Firth)
Ventriloquist and the Dummy (Blair Hickey)
Drowned during Circus act in circus pool
Car accident after car went off road and crashed into tree
Crossed over
Lost spirit

19
Ely Fisher (Giancarlo Esposito)
Rachel Fisher (Femi Emiola)
"Rain Check" Nurse (Sarah Hunley)
Bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe
Heart attack
Unknown
Crossed over
Crossed over
Uncertain but most likely crossed over.

20
Brian Fordyce (Chris Olivero)
Heart attack
Crossed over

21
22
Ken Nilson/pilot (Chris Ellis)
Almost all people killed in airplane crash
At least three people in airplane crash
All died in plane crash due to pilot error
Crossed over
Crossed over
Lost spirit

Season 2
1
Andrea Marino (Aisha Tyler)
Plane landed on her car and crushed her to death
Crossed over
Killed in Season 1 Episode 21, co-owner of Melinda's antique shop.

2
Jamie Barton (Greg Cipes)
Kyle McCall/Mac (Michael Landes)
Unknown
Hit by a car
Crossed over
Crossed over
Was attached to Ned Banks
Melinda's former boyfriend.

3
Emily Morrison (Tatum McCann)
Fell into pool and drowned while reaching for a beach ball
Shiny

4
Dennis Hightower (Kevin Weisman)
Carbon monoxide poisoning
Crossed over

5
Adam Godfrey (David Paymer)
Marilyn Mandeville (Harriet Sansom Harris)
Struck by lightning
Heart attack
Crossed over
Crossed over

6
Eva Kaminsky (Amanda Tosch)
Sevoflurane (anaesthetic) poisoning
Crossed over

7
Anna Fowler (Bess Wohl)
Hypothermia
Crossed over

8
Warren Chen (Tim Kang)
Woman the night Melinda met Jim
Ghost in funeral home
Burned to death in arson crime
Died in building fire
Unknown
Crossed over
Crossed over
Did not cross over

9
Patrick Roth (Norbert Weisser)
Jared (John Paul Pitoc)
Natural causes
Plane crash due to pilot error
Crossed over
Lost spirit

10
Matt Vonner (Christopher Wiehl)
Car crash due to car spinning and crashing into a
light pole

Crossed over

11
Dr. Martin Schaer (Reed Diamond)
Dengue fever from mosquito bite
Crossed over

12
Hugh Bristow (Brad Rowe)
Taken off life support due to Lou Gehrig's disease
Crossed over

13
Eric Sanborn / John Richmond / Oscar Hodges / Richard Ward (David Clayton Rogers)
Aortic aneurysm
Crossed over
Was a spirit that died 4 times after being reincarnated. Melinda believes him staying behind was a sign that he was to be her and Jim's future child they would have together.

14
Gordon Pike (Eric Johnson)
Car crash due to drag racer crashing into wall
Crossed over

15
Tais Baker (Rhea Lando)
Pipe explosion in the high school boiler room
Crossed over

16
Randy Cooper (Chad Donella)
Suffocated due to an asthma attack
Lost spirit

17
Bryan Curtis(Jamie Bamber)
Jason Bennett (Dan Byrd)
Suicide by stepping out into traffic
Muscular dystrophy
Crossed over
Crossed over

18
Valerie Parker (Kathleen Wilhoite)
Abdominal aneurysm
Crossed over

19
Charlie Banks (Fredric Lehne)
Jackson Reynolds (Gil McKinney)
Shot and killed by Milt Charles
Slipped and hit head on rock.
Crossed over
Crossed over
Delia Banks' husband
Naked soldier. (ranked private)

20
Martina Rose (Allison McAtee)
Amy Fields (Rachel Cannon)
Heart attack
Airplane crash due to pilot error
Lost spirit
Crossed over

Amy Fields died in the Season 1 finale.

21
Dana Clark (Vivian Wu)
Boat sinks due to hull being torn by rocks
Crossed over
Prophet ghost, wife of Ethan Clark.

22
Dana Clark (Vivian Wu)
Boat sinks due to hull being torn by rocks
Crossed over

Season 3
1
Ray Billings
Scott
Carbon monoxide explosion
Unknown
Crossed over
Lost spirit
Originally haunting Melinda's mother
Haunts the archives; portrayed by Kris Lemche.

2
Rachel Fordham (Mae Whitman)
Heart attack
Crossed over
Thought she was Bloody Mary.

3
Hector Sanchez
Steve Simmon
Dekker
Killed in landmine explosion
Crossed over
Crossed over
Crossed over

4
Colleen Finn (Sarah Utterback)
Shane Carson (Josh Hopkins)
Falling over stairway railing
Suicide by overdosing
Crossed over
Lost spirit
Shane stalked Melinda and Colleen.

5
Tessa Lucas
Several Other Ghosts
Burned to death after being accused of witchcraft
All burned to death in a fire someone caused after eating diseased bread
Crossed over
Lost spirits
Melinda's great-great-great-grandmother that died in 1848. Lost spirits are in the old Grandview.

6
Kevin Graham
Car crash due to car colliding with another car
Crossed over

7
Sydney Drake
Overwhelming withdrawal symptoms
Crossed over

8
Liz Sinclair (Stacy Edwards)
Matt Sembrook (Matthew Morrison)
Vivian Sembrook (Kathleen York)
Falling off a cliff
Carbon monoxide poisoning
Carbon monoxide poisoning
Crossed over
Lost spirit
Lost spirit
Liz Sinclair sacrificed herself so her husband could save their daughter.

9
Daniel Asher
Audrey Asher
Sam Asher
Burned to death in a car crash
Car crash due to car colliding with gasoline tanker
Car crash due to car colliding with a gasoline tanker
Shiny
Crossed over
Crossed over

10
Alan Silver
Heart attack
Did not cross over
Thought he was Santa, realized he wasn't, but decided he liked helping kids so he stuck around.

11
Thomas Benjamin
Hit his head on a chalkboard
Crossed over

12
Peter Harrison
Requested euthanasia via lethal dose of isonitrile
Crossed over

13
Karen Benzing
Cancer
Crossed over

14
Justin Yates
Julie Anderson (Katie Lowes)
brain aneurysm
Drowned on boat she capsized for an insurance scam.
Crossed over
Lost Spirit

15
Toby Bates
Fell out of a window
Crossed over

16
Kate Payne (Rachel Shelley)
Zach
Crushed to death by a crane
Crashed his bike and hit his head on a piece of debris
Crossed over
Crossed over
Rick Payne's wife, seen in previous episodes.
Web episode

17
Michael Wilkins
Fell off a tree and was hanged by the cape he was wearing
Shiny

18
Paul Eastman
Tom Gordon
Bludgeoned to death with a stair post
Thrown down the stairs
Crossed over
Lost spirit
Melinda's father, killed pre-Ghost Whisperer
Melinda's stepfather.

Season 4
1
Fiona Raine
Burned to death in a fire
Crossed over

2
Lucas Marston
Accidental drug overdose
Crossed over
Melinda's classmate.

3
Larry Jones
Heart attack
Crossed over

4
Lorelei (Peyton List)
Betty (Katherine LaNasa)
Several other ghosts
Fell to her death in a ship duct
Heart failure
Various deaths
Crossed over
Refused to cross over
Crossed over

5
Diana Morrison
Blood clot in lung
Crossed over

6
Owen Grace
Jim Clancy
Accidentally drowned due to leg brace
Air embolism due to being shot in the shoulder
Shiny
Living in Sam Lucas' body
-
Melinda's husband

7
Sam Lucas
Caitlin Mahoney
Dan Clancy
Car crash due to car colliding with other car
Died from complications of Anorexia Nervosa
Fell off a roof and died
Crossed over
Crossed over
Crossed over
-
-
Jim Clancy's brother, seen in the pilot episode. Crossed over in this episode.

8
Allen Walters
Car crash due to hitting a motorcycle
Crossed over
Was the driver of the car that hit Sam Lucas' motorcycle; he was angry that "Sam"/Jim came back to life.

9
Gretchen Dennis
Fell down a well and drowned while reaching for a note she stuck on the inside-wall of the well
Shiny

10
Tammy Gardner/ Sarah Evers
Murder via being drugged and carbon monoxide poisoning
Crossed over

11
Josh Bancroft
Exsanguination after being thrown from a riding mower and cut up
Shiny

12
Angela Hollensbach
Myrna Cooperton
Frank Whitaker
Drina
Hit by a car
Natural Causes
Truck gave way while fixing flat
Unknown
Crossed over
Crossed over
Crossed over
Did not cross over
Delia's old friend from high school/First ghost that Eli crossed over without Melinda

13
Carl Sessick
Edwin Hathaway
Numerous Ghosts
Died of lung cancer
Stroke
Various deaths
Did not cross over
Crossed over
All crossed over
Followed the Watchers, on the quest for good
Died in the hospital but dumped into the lake due to furnace problems at funeral home
Dumped into a lake due to furnace problems at funeral home

14
Deborah Marks
Tripped and hit her head on a fireplace post
Crossed over
Had to let the son she gave up for adoption know that she was his mother. He had been falling for his half sister. Her daughter though Deborah had a crush on him.

15
Rebecca Kelly
Caught in a rock slide, pushed off a cliff face and was hanged by a net
Crossed over

16
Jeffery Crocket (Carrie's Dad)
Natural causes
Crossed over

17
Grier Clarkson
Numerous Ghosts
Botched shock therapy treatments
Botched shock therapy treatments
Crossed over
Crossed over

18
Joseph Webb
Calvin Byrd
Leukemia
Natural Causes
Living in Ben Tillman's body
Crossed over
Became a "step-in", living in Ben Tillman's body

19
Rick Hartman
Committed suicide by jumping out of a plane
Crossed over

20
Miles Maitland
Prop gun backfired and shot him in the side of his head.
Crossed over

21
Stanton family
Marc
Carbon monoxide poisoning
Crossed over
Did not cross over
Web episode

22
Andrew Carlin
Thrombocytosis
Crossed over

23
Zoe Ramos
Fell down the stairs
Crossed over
Eli's girlfriend; guardian of the Book of Changes

Season 5
1
Amber Heaton
Aortic rupture during childbirth
Crossed over

2
Gwen Coritter
Paula Coritter
Scarlet Breslin
Hit by an SUV
Inoperable brain tumor
Accused of slanderous gossip, eyes and mouth were stitched shut
Crossed over
Crossed over
Lost Spirit
Scarlet made Julia Miller create the "Sally Stitch" website.

3
Ray James
Evelyn James
Heart attack
Aneurysm
Did not cross over
Did not cross over
Eli's parents. They stayed around to watch over Eli.

4
Dr. Albert Glassman
Ghost in the morgue
Heart attack
Unknown
Crossed over
Unknown
The ghost in the morgue probably cross under just like Greta Hansen

5
Amy Warner
Breast cancer
Crossed over

6
Sean Jackson
Thrown off of a horse
Crossed over

7
Tina Clark
Drug overdose and car accident
Crossed over

8
Kirk Jansen
Rita Jansen
Walked into a crawl space that had aflatoxis, a mold that made him go into anaphylaxis
Fatal electrocution from a light table she smashed with a golf club
Crossed over
Crossed over

9
Julia Miller
Leukemia
Shiny
Originally attached herself to Aiden to keep from going into the light.

10
Dylan Hale
Accidentally bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat
Crossed Over

11
Bruce Adler
Car accident when the car went into the river
Crossed Over

12
Trevor Marshall
Fell and was impaled to death by a metal pike
Crossed Over

13
Vernon Dokes
Marlene Dokes
Lane Dokes
Suicide by exsanguination from wrist cutting due to Fatal familial insomnia (FFI)
Exsanguination by being slashed in the arm
Suicide by jumping off a bridge due to FFI.
Crossed Over
Crossed Over
Shiny

14
Madison Clark
Car accident
Shiny

15
Joey Kale
Joshua Bedford
Numerous Ghosts
Suffocated to death inside an old army storage unit
Died in a bomb explosion
Numerous Deaths
Shiny
Did not cross over
Stayed on the old army base

16
Cassidy Peyton
Greta Hansen
Garrett
Naomi
Sick Boy
Guillain–Barré syndrome
Wheelchair fell down the stairs
Execution by electric chair
Execution by hanging
Disease
Shiny
Lost spirit
Crossed Over
Crossed Over
Did not cross over
Cassidy crossed over but came back to talk to Aiden and revealed that ghost children became shinies
Greta made a deal with the shadows that as long as she feeds them children's ghosts they would not take her.
Greta used Cassidy to lure him to their mansion before he died.

17
Shane Dunning
Fell through an ice lake and drowned
Crossed Over

18
Charles Hammond
Asphyxiated to death on a balloon
Crossed Over

19
Laura Bradley
Poisoned to death with Chloramine gas
Crossed Over

20
Henry Alston
Murdered by Geoff Colson via gunshot wound
Crossed Over

21
Seth Farber
Sharon Farber
Fell to his death off a roof
Died in the plane crash
Shiny
Crossed Over

She crossed over when all of the spirits in the plane crash crossed over at the same time in the Season 01 episode 22 "The One"

22
Pete Murphy (Billy Unger)
Numerous Children
Hodgkins Disease
Polio
Shiny
Shinies

text: Lost spirits[edit]

text: These are some of the spirits who either did not cross over or went to the Dark Side (Hell).

text:
Laughing Man (appears with Romano and is a ghostly agent for the dark side. He wears a two-piece suit and is usually seen laughing. He was portrayed by Douglas Bierman; death was from accidental ingestion of water dropwort)[8]
Bleeding Man (a dark spirit whose right hand is bleeding, hence his name. He was portrayed by Lou Glenn; death was from exsanguination)
Bloody Mary, a girl who was accidentally buried alive and died in the coffin, scratching her nails off on the seal of the coffin. Seen in the last seconds of Episode 2, Season 3
Giles Nickelburg (plane crash due to pilot error)
Greg Carter (car accident due to car going off a cliff)
Martha Rucker (building collapse)
Unnamed Man (conjunctivitis infection)
Greta Hansen (wheelchair fell down the stairs)
Tom Gordon (fell down the stairs)
Eli's parents (death from natural causes. Melinda helps them see The Light after solving a problem between them. The problem was caused by the fact that Eli's mother was a lesbian and had an affair with a friend. Eli's father thought she was really having a love affair with her friend's husband, making his spirit unable to cross over. They decide to stay to take care of her son, although he disagrees with the idea.)
Shane Carson (suicide to continue stalking Melinda)
Randy Cooper ( asthma attack)

text: Shinies and Shadows[edit]

text: Two different kinds of spirits that appear throughout the series. They are sworn enemies of each other, created by the emotions of ghosts, and feed upon others. Aiden Lucas, Melinda's son, is the only one who has the ability to see both of them while his mother and the Watchers cannot.

text: Shinies[edit]

text: Beings of good who are composed of light energy. Aiden reveals, in Season 5, that the Shinies are ghost children that have crossed over into The Light. He also comments that there are more Shinies than there are Shadows, and that if they were to go to war with each other, the Shinies would win. The Shadows prevent their growing numbers by consuming still-earthbound ghost children, making the Shinies fear them. But in the episode "The Children's Parade", Aiden reveals that if he, along with the other Shinies, use their combined power, they can defeat the Shadows forever.

text: In previous seasons, the Shinies have already revealed their presence to Melinda without her knowing. Carl, a Watcher, tells Melinda that she is surrounded by "light beings" watching over her and they are shown all throughout Grandview, watching over her during her wedding vow renewal. In later events, Melinda notices Aiden talking to himself. But later events reveal that Aiden has the ability to see these spirits (the Shinies), which she cannot see. Cassidy Peyton, a ghost girl Melinda crossed over, becomes a Shiny after going into The Light and becomes good friends with Aiden.

text: Shinies are attracted to "shiny things" such as flashlights, utensils, etc. Also, the Shinies are afraid of the Shadows, as depicted in the season 5 episode "Lost in the Shadows".

text: In the series finale ("The Children's Parade") the Shinies, led by Aiden, destroy the Shadows once and for all.

text: Shadows[edit]

text: The Shadows are ghosts who are seen as beings of darkness. Aiden reveals that the Shadows are either "broken pieces" left behind by ghosts who have crossed over or have "crossed under". Ghosts describe them as cold things and don't like to talk about them. They feed on the negative emotions of ghosts, especially ghost children, break their souls beyond repair, and feed on the rest of them.

text: In previous seasons, Gabriel was working for them, but since he disappeared they could no longer block The Light. They are extremely dangerous and use people, both living and dead, to gather the souls of ghost children so that they may feed; examples are President Bedford of Rockland University to get the Book of Changes, which helps Melinda, Eli and Aiden, but they killed him when he could not complete the task. Another is Greta Hansen, a woman in a wheelchair who helped the Shadows by luring children's spirits into her house (using Cassidy Peyton), but Melinda saved some spirits imprisoned by the ghost Greta.

text: Ravens are their symbols, and they fear lights, shiny things, and the Shinies.


document_title: History of mobile phones

question_text: when was the first cell phone ever made

question_tokens: when was the first cell phone ever made

text: History of mobile phones

text: Predecessors[edit]

text: Before the devices existed that are now referred to as mobile phones or cell phones, there were some precursors. In 1908, a Professor Albert Jahnke and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not seem to have proceeded with production.[2] Beginning in 1918, the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen.[3] In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie AG was founded to supply train telephony equipment and, in 1926, telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to first-class travelers.[4]

text: Fiction anticipated the development of real world mobile telephones. In 1906, the English caricaturist Lewis Baumer published a cartoon in Punch magazine entitled "Forecasts for 1907" in which he showed a man and a woman in London's Hyde Park each separately engaged in gambling and dating on wireless telephony equipment.[5] Then, in 1926, the artist Karl Arnold created a visionary cartoon about the use of mobile phones in the street, in the picture "wireless telephony", published in the German satirical magazine Simplicissimus.[6]

text: The Second World War made military use of radio telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940s. Early devices were bulky, consumed high power, and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. Modern cellular networks allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice and data communications.

text: In the United States, engineers from Bell Labs began work on a system to allow mobile users to place and receive telephone calls from automobiles, leading to the inauguration of mobile service on 17 June 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after, AT&T offered Mobile Telephone Service. A wide range of mostly incompatible mobile telephone services offered limited coverage area and only a few available channels in urban areas. The introduction of cellular technology, which allowed re-use of frequencies many times in small adjacent areas covered by relatively low powered transmitters, made widespread adoption of mobile telephones economically feasible.

text: In the USSR, Leonid Kupriyanovich, an engineer from Moscow, in 1957-1961 developed and presented a number of experimental pocket-sized communications radio. The weight of one model, presented in 1961, was only 70 g and could fit on a palm.[7][8] However, in the USSR the decision at first to develop the system of the automobile "Altai" phone was made.[9]

text: In 1965, Bulgarian company "Radioelektronika" presented on the Inforga-65 international exhibition in Moscow the mobile automatic phone combined with a base station. Solutions of this phone were based on a system developed by Leonid Kupriyanovich. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to 15 customers.[10]

text: The advances in mobile telephony can be traced in successive generations from the early "0G" services like MTS and its successor Improved Mobile Telephone Service, to first-generation (1G) analog cellular network, second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, third-generation (3G) broadband data services to the state-of-the-art, fourth-generation (4G) native-IP networks.

text: Early services[edit]

text: MTS[edit]

text: In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to talk and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about 80 pounds (36 kg)[11]

text: Subscriber growth and revenue generation were hampered by the constraints of the technology. Because only three radio channels were available, only three customers in any given city could make mobile telephone calls at one time.[12] Mobile Telephone Service was expensive, costing 15 USD per month, plus 0.30 to 0.40 USD per local call, equivalent to about 176 USD per month and 3.50 to 4.75 per call in 2012 USD.[11]

text: In the UK, there was also a vehicle-based system called "Post Office Radiophone Service,"[13] which was launched around the city of Manchester in 1959, and although it required callers to speak to an operator, it was possible to be put through to any subscriber in Great Britain. The service was extended to London in 1965 and other major cities in 1972.

text: IMTS[edit]

text: AT&T introduced the first major improvement to mobile telephony in 1965, giving the improved service the obvious name of Improved Mobile Telephone Service. IMTS used additional radio channels, allowing more simultaneous calls in a given geographic area, introduced customer dialing, eliminating manual call setup by an operator, and reduced the size and weight of the subscriber equipment.[11]

text: Despite the capacity improvement offered by IMTS, demand outstripped capacity. In agreement with state regulatory agencies, AT&T limited the service to just 40,000 customers system wide. In New York City, for example, 2,000 customers shared just 12 radio channels and typically had to wait 30 minutes to place a call.[11]

text: Radio Common Carrier[edit]

text: Radio Common Carrier[14] or RCC was a service introduced in the 1960s by independent telephone companies to compete against AT&T's IMTS. RCC systems used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS. RCC based services were provided until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete.

text: Some RCC systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent carriers to use their facilities,  but equipment used by RCCs did not allow the equivalent of modern "roaming" because technical standards were not uniform.  For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging to alert a mobile of an incoming call. Other systems used DTMF. Some used Secode 2805, which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk LOMO equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets and rotary dials or pushbutton pads, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their day)

text: At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.

text: Other services[edit]

text: In 1969 Penn Central Railroad equipped commuter trains along the 360 kilometres (220 mi) New York-Washington route with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while the train was moving.  The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHz band in nine sites.[12]

text:
In the UK, Channel Islands and elsewhere the "Rabbit" phone system was briefly used, being a hybrid of "cell" base stations and handsets. One major limitation was that you had to be less than 300 feet (closer with buildings) from a base due to power limitations on a portable device.
[15][better source needed]
With modern technology a similar variant is being considered for Apple's new 4G "smart watch" so they can be used in large events in a broadly similar way to a femtocell.

text: European mobile radio networks[edit]

text: This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: In Europe, several mutually incompatible mobile radio services were developed.

text: In 1966 Norway had a system called OLT which was manually controlled. Finland's ARP, launched in 1971, was also manual as was the Swedish MTD. All were replaced by the automatic NMT, (Nordic Mobile Telephone) system in the early 1980s.

text: In July 1971 Readycall was introduced in London by Burndept after obtaining a special concession to break the Post Office monopoly to allow selective calling to mobiles of calls from the public telephone system. This system was available to the public for a subscription of £16 month. A year later the service was extended to two other UK towns.[16]

text: West Germany had a network called A-Netz launched in 1952 as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. In 1972 this was displaced by B-Netz which connected calls automatically.

text: The cellular concept[edit]

text: In December 1947, Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young, Bell Labs engineers, proposed hexagonal cells for mobile phones in vehicles.[17]   At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies been allocated.  Two decades would pass before Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel and Philip T. Porter of Bell Labs expanded the early proposals into a much more detailed system plan. It was Porter who first proposed that the cell towers use the now-familiar directional antennas to reduce interference and increase channel reuse (see picture at right)[18] Porter also invented the dial-then-send method used by all cell phones to reduce wasted channel time.

text: In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas.  The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the late 1960s, in papers by Frenkiel and Porter. In 1970 Amos E. Joel, Jr., a Bell Labs engineer,[19] invented a "three-sided trunk circuit" to aid in the "call handoff" process from one cell to another.  His patent contained an early description of the Bell Labs cellular concept, but as switching systems became faster, such a circuit became unnecessary and was never implemented in a system.

text: A cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973,[20] and a cellular telephone data signaling system was described in hipatitas by Hachenburg et al.[21]

text: Emergence of automated services[edit]

text: The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden in 1956. Named MTA (Mobiltelefonisystem A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using a rotary dial. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to locate the nearest base station to the car. It was developed by Sture Laurén and other engineers at Televerket network operator. Ericsson provided the switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi provided the telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tubes and relays, and weighed 40 kilograms (88 lb). In 1962, an upgraded version called Mobile System B (MTB) was introduced. This was a push-button telephone, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success.[22][23] The network remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.

text: In 1958 development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR.[24] The "Altay" national civil mobile phone service was based on Soviet MRT-1327 standard. The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963 the service started in Moscow, and by 1970 was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are still in use today as a trunking system in some parts of Russia.

text: In 1959 a private telephone company in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles. For some as yet unknown reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.[citation needed]

text: In 1966, Bulgaria presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six customers ("Radio" magazine, 2, 1967; "Novosti dnya" newsreel, 37, 1966).

text: One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP network in Finland, launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a zero generation (0G) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and limited coverage networks.[citation needed]

text: Handheld mobile phone[edit]

text: Prior to 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles.[19] Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone.  On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival.[25][26][27]  The prototype handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed 1.1 kilograms (2.4 lb) and measured 23 by 13 by 4.5 centimetres (9.1 by 5.1 by 1.8 in). The prototype offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge.[28]

text: John F. Mitchell,[29][30][31] Motorola's chief of portable communication products and Cooper's boss in 1973, played a key role in advancing the development of handheld mobile telephone equipment. Mitchell successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.[32][33]

text: The early generations[edit]

text: Newer technology has been developed and rolled out in a series of waves or generations. The "generation" terminology only became widely used when 3G was launched, but is now used retroactively when referring to the earlier systems.

text: 1G – Analogue cellular[edit]

text: First automatic analogue cellular systems deployed were NTT's system first used in Tokyo in 1979, later spreading to the whole of Japan, and NMT in the Nordic countries in 1981.

text: The first analogue cellular system widely deployed in North America was the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS).[34] It was commercially introduced in the Americas in 13 October 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. AMPS was a pioneering technology that helped drive mass market usage of cellular technology, but it had several serious issues by modern standards. It was unencrypted and easily vulnerable to eavesdropping via a scanner; it was susceptible to cell phone "cloning" and it used a Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) scheme and required significant amounts of wireless spectrum to support.

text: On 6 March 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X mobile phone launched on the first US 1G network by Ameritech.  It cost $100m to develop, and took over a decade to reach the market.[35] The phone had a talk time of just thirty-five minutes and took ten hours to charge. Consumer demand was strong despite the battery life, weight, and low talk time, and waiting lists were in the thousands.[36][37]

text: Many of the iconic early commercial cell phones such as the Motorola DynaTAC Analog AMPS were eventually superseded by Digital AMPS (D-AMPS) in 1990, and AMPS service was shut down by most North American carriers by 2008.

text: In February 1986 Australia launched its Cellular Telephone System by Telecom Australia. Peter Reedman was the first Telecom Customer to be connected on 6 January 1986 along with five other subscribers as test customers prior to the official launch date of 28 February.

text: 2G – Digital cellular[edit]

text: In the 1990s, the 'second generation' mobile phone systems emerged. Two systems competed for supremacy in the global market: the European developed GSM standard and the U.S. developed CDMA standard. These differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band phone-to-network signaling. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent of prepaid mobile phones.

text: In 1991 the first GSM network (Radiolinja) launched in Finland. In general the frequencies used by 2G systems in Europe were higher than those in America, though with some overlap. For example, the 900 MHz frequency range was used for both 1G and 2G systems in Europe, so the 1G systems were rapidly closed down to make space for the 2G systems. In America the IS-54 standard was deployed in the same band as AMPS and displaced some of the existing analog channels.

text:
In 1993, IBM Simon was introduced. This was possibly the world's first smartphone. It was a mobile phone, pager, fax machine, and PDA all rolled into one. It included a calendar, address book, clock, calculator, notepad, email, and a touchscreen with a QWERTY keyboard.[38]  The IBM Simon had a stylus you used to tap the touch screen with. It featured predictive typing that would guess the next characters as you tapped. It had applications, or at least a way to deliver more features by plugging a PCMCIA 1.8 MB memory card into the phone.[39]
Coinciding with the introduction of 2G systems was a trend away from the larger "brick" phones toward tiny 100–200 grams (3.5–7.1 oz) hand-held devices. This change was possible not only through technological improvements such as more advanced batteries and more energy-efficient electronics, but also because of the higher density of cell sites to accommodate increasing usage. The latter meant that the average distance transmission from phone to the base station shortened, leading to increased battery life while on the move.

text: The second generation introduced a new variant of communication called SMS or text messaging. It was initially available only on GSM networks but spread eventually on all digital networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK on 3 December 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS sent in Finland. The advent of prepaid services in the late 1990s soon made SMS the communication method of choice among the young, a trend which spread across all ages.

text: 2G also introduced the ability to access media content on mobile phones. In 1998 the first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the ring tone, launched by Finland's Radiolinja (now Elisa). Advertising on the mobile phone first appeared in Finland when a free daily SMS news headline service was launched in 2000, sponsored by advertising.

text: Mobile payments were trialed in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for a Coca-Cola vending machine and car parking. Commercial launches followed in 1999 in Norway. The first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.

text: The first full internet service on mobile phones was introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.

text: 3G – Mobile broadband[edit]

text: As the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to use mobile phones in their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data (such as access to browse the internet) was growing. Further, experience from fixed broadband services showed there would also be an ever-increasing demand for greater data speeds. The 2G technology was nowhere near up to the job, so the industry began to work on the next generation of technology known as 3G. The main technological difference that distinguishes 3G technology from 2G technology is the use of packet switching rather than circuit switching for data transmission.[40] In addition, the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).

text: Inevitably this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol while retaining backwards compatibility:

text:
Introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s
Protocols that would decrease connection establishment time
Ability for more than one mobile to share the same time slot
Introduction of QoS flags

text: All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.[41]

text: The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on 1 October 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the US. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further eight commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.

text: During the development of 3G systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.

text: The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible,[42]  with companies such as RealNetworks[43] and Disney[44] among the early pioneers in this type of offering.

text: In the mid-2000s (decade), an evolution of 3G technology began to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s.

text: By the end of 2007, there were 295 million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over $120 billion of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation.

text: Although mobile phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet, it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G coverage in the mid-2000s (decade) that specialized devices appeared to access the mobile web. The first such devices, known as "dongles", plugged directly into a computer through the USB port. Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router" such as the Novatel MiFi, which makes 3G Internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi, rather than just to a single computer via a USB plug-in.

text: Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbook's footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and the Nook from Barnes & Noble, had already become available with embedded wireless Internet, and Apple had announced plans for embedded wireless Internet on its iPad tablet devices later that year.

text: 4G – Native IP networks[edit]

text: By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.[45] Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard (offered in the U.S. by Sprint) and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.

text: One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing packet switching over Internet, LAN or WAN networks via VoIP.[46]

text: Mobile device charger standards[edit]

text:
USB power standards for mobile charger

Port

Current

Voltage

Power (max)

Micro-USB

500 mA
5 V
2.5 W

1 A
5 V
5 W

2 A
5 V
10 W

Type-C[47]

100 mA to 3 A
5 V
15 W

1.7 A to 3 A
9 V
27 W

1.8 A to 3 A
15 V
45 W

2.25 A to 5 A
20 V
100 W

text: Before a universal charger standard was agreed upon in the late 2000s users needed an adaptor which was often the same brand as their phone to recharge the battery.

text: In China[edit]

text: As of  14 June 2007[update], all new mobile phones applying for a license in China are required to use a USB port as a power port for battery charging.[48][49] This was the first standard to use the convention of shorting D+ and D−.[50]

text: OMTP/GSMA Universal Charging Solution[edit]

text: In September 2007, the Open Mobile Terminal Platform group (a forum of mobile network operators and manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG) announced that its members had agreed on Micro-USB as the future common connector for mobile devices.[51][52]

text: The GSM Association (GSMA) followed suit on 17 February 2009,[53][53][54][55][56] and on 22 April 2009, this was further endorsed by the CTIA – The Wireless Association,[57] with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announcing on 22 October 2009 that it had also embraced the Universal Charging Solution as its "energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phone solution," and added: "Based on the Micro-USB interface, UCS chargers will also include a 4-star or higher efficiency rating—up to three times more energy-efficient than an unrated charger."[58]

text: EU smartphone power supply standard[edit]

text: In June 2009, many of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers signed an EC-sponsored Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), agreeing to make most data-enabled mobile phones marketed in the European Union compatible with a common External Power Supply (common EPS). The EU's common EPS specification (EN 62684:2010) references the USB Battery Charging Specification and is similar to the GSMA/OMTP and Chinese charging solutions.[59][60] In January 2011, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) released its version of the (EU's) common EPS standard as IEC 62684:2011.[61]

text: Satellite mobile[edit]

text: As well as the now-common cellular phone, there is also the very different approach of connecting directly from the handset to an Earth-orbiting satellite. Such mobile phones can be used in remote areas out of reach of wired networks or where construction of a cellular network is uneconomic.

text: The Inmarsat system is the oldest, originally developed in 1979 for safety of life at sea, and uses a series of satellites in geostationary orbits to cover the majority of the globe. Several smaller operators use the same approach with just one or two satellites to provide a regional service. An alternative approach is to use a series of low Earth orbit satellites much closer to Earth. This is the basis of the Iridium and Globalstar satellite phone services.