The first mobile phone call was placed 40 years ago

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The first mobile phone call was placed 40 years ago today

Published April 03, 2013
FoxNews.com

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There were no digital cameras, no personal computers, and certainly no Internet in 1973.
But there were cell phones. Well, one anyway.
On April 3, 1973, from a Manhattan street corner -- 6th Ave. between 53rd and 54th -- Motorola’s Martin Cooper placed the world’s first mobile phone call. To his rival, no less.
“I was running the whole Motorola cellular program, I was a division manager at that time, and he was the AT&T equivalent,” Cooper told tech site the Verge last year, on the 39th anniversary of that phone call. “I have to tell you, to this day, he resents what Motorola did in those days.”
Cooper called Joel Engel from Bell Systems to tell him that the race to perfect cellular tech was over -- Motorola had done it first. Cooper's exact words on that call weren’t recorded the way Samuel Morse’s first telegraph message was (“what hath god wrought”) or Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call (“Watson, come here. I want to see you”). He reportedly said something like, "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end."
The gadget he used is well known, however.
The prototype version that would become the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x weighed 2.5 pounds, had a single-line, text-only LED screen. It would take a decade before Motorola’s DynaTAC finally reached consumer hands.
On September 21, 1983, Motorola made history when the FCC approved the 8000X, the world's first commercial portable cell phone. It cost consumers a whopping $3,995 at the time.
And the hunk of cream-colored plastic and wires Cooper used looks preposterous next to the sleek modern iPhones and Androids today’s consumers rely upon, of course.
Even Cooper has moved on: today he relies on a Motorola RAZR -- or at least he did last year, he told The Verge. Cooper remains a pioneer in cell phones; he told the site he gets a new one every six months.
“I'm being sorely tested lately because the phones are coming out so fast. Each time they get a little better, and I think they're pretty much on a par now — if you know how to use them — with the iPhone,” he told The Verge.

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The first cell phone

As early as the 1930s travelers could place phone calls from and to ocean liners in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The process was driven by Marine VHF Radio and cost $7 a minute (roughly $100 a minute when adjusted for inflation to today’s money).

The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden by TeliaSonera and Ericsson in 1956. Named MTA (Mobile Telephone system A). This was the first time calls could be made and received in the car while using the public telephone network.

Prior to 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles.

on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment. The prototype handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed 2.5 pounds and measured 9 inches long, 5 inches deep and 1.75 inches wide. The prototype offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge.

By 1981, the first generation of mobile telephone systems known as Nordic Mobile Telephone System emerged in Sweden and Norway. Osten Makitalo, who is know as the father of the mobile telephone, said “NMT was the first modern telephone system, the mother of all mobile telephones. Everything after that are actually just copies.”
Initial NMT phones were designed to mount in the trunk of a car, with a keyboard/display unit at the drivers seat. "Portable" versions existed: one could definitely move them, but they were bulky, and battery lifetime was a big problem.

On March 6, 1983 Motorola started selling DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercial portable cellular telephone, at a price of $3,995. The DynaTAC 8000X was truly the first mobile telephone which could connect to the telephone network without the assistance of a mobile operator and could be carried about by the user.

It weighed 28 ounces (790 g) and was 10 inches (25 cm) high, not including its flexible "rubber duck" whip antenna. It offered 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby, and a LED display for dialling or recall of one of 30 phone numbers.