How it Happened

It was noticed a couple of years ago that the Montana-Wyoming staff was being shortchanged. Since workers in general don't carry much change around as it is, shortchanging seemed an even bigger deal than it might for others with lots of change in their pockets.

History

Thing is, workers travel. They began to notice that when workers in other areas needed to find some contact information about friends or workers in their fields they had a new trick up their sleeves. Or, more likely, in their shirt pockets or purses. Instead pulling out a tiny, thick address book from a bulging purse or shirt pocket (unless the book was specifically designed to just barely not fit in a regular shirt pocket) they pulled out a tiny, thin smart phone (falsely so-called). Every time this happened were "Wow!" moments. Instead of driving with one hand while thumbing with the other through the tiny hardcopy address book that was barely legible in the best of light and over smooth roads, they were instead driving with one hand while virtually thumbing with the other by swiping (with their thumbs, of course) through virtual pages in a virtual book on their phones while attempting to read text in an equally tiny font. At least the screen was backlit. And, as seemed to be the norm, the driver often appeared pressed to keep an uninterrupted monologue going to describe how cool this new technology was, if they could only get it to work.

Sensing the discomfort of others in the vehicle about what they were doing, the driver would assure the passengers that, in fact, there was no reason to worry, because no law was being broken. They were not, after all, texting while driving. That factoid seemed not to lessen the "Wow!" factor at all for the visiting workers in the car.

Starting Out

It gradually became clear from such convincing demonstrations that the Montana and Wyoming staff would find this technology to be helpful, too, and this project was begun.