Martin Cooper, the first public call from a cell phone, and how many cell phones were made in the 1990s and 2000s: From a brick to an acoustic cell phone
Martin Cooper made the first public call from a cell phone to one of the men he was competing with on a sidewalk in Manhattan on April 3, 1973, when he stood on a sidewalk with a device the size of a brick.
In the fifty years since that first call, Cooper’s bulky device has evolved and been replaced by a wide range of thinner, faster phones that are now ubiquitous and reshaping industries, culture and the way we relate to one another and ourselves. But while the vast reach and impact of cell phones may have caught some off guard, Cooper said the possibility that mobile phones would one day be deemed essential to much of mankind was clear from the start.
In the months before that first call, Moto was trying to beat Bell Labs, a research arm of AT&T that developed the transistor and other innovations.
Cooper said the company was the biggest in the world and they were a little company in Chicago. “They just didn’t think we were very important.”
I’m not averse to rubbing his nose in this thing. Cooper said that he was polite to him. “To this day, Joel does not remember that phone call, and I guess I don’t blame him.” (CNN was unable to contact Engel.)
Manufacturing issues and government regulations slowed the progress of bringing the phone to the public after Cooper’s first call. For example, Cooper recalls the Federal Communications Commission, an agency at which he now serves as an adviser, struggling to sort out how to split up radio channels to ensure competition.
It would take a decade for a version of that DynaTAC (Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) phone to hit the market, for a hefty $3,900. The phone, similar to the one Gordon Gekko wielded in the movie “Wall Street,” weighed 2.5 pounds and was about a foot tall.
The 1990s saw the beginning of the modern cell phone as it became much more user friendly. Today, 97% of Americans own a cell phone of some kind, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center.
I’m Calling You From a Cellular, or How I Wanna Call You From My Phone, But I Can’t Throat With My Apple Watch,” said Cooper
“Too many engineers are wrapped up in what they call technology and the gadgets, the hardware, and they forget that the whole purpose of technology is to make peoples’ lives better,” said Cooper. “People forget that, and I have to keep reminding them. We are trying to find a better way to experience humans. That’s what technology is all about.”
Looking back on the past 50 years, however, Cooper is largely approving of where the phone has taken us. He loves using his Apple Watch to record his swimming activity and connect his hearing aids to his phone, because he uses his Apple watch to keep track of his swimming activity. Cooper thinks the technology is net positive for society.
“I’m calling you from a cellphone,” I said. A phone. A personal cellphone. I wasn’t hesitant to rub his nose in our achievement.
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We knew back in 1973 that someday, everybody would have a cellphone, and we’re almost there. Two-thirds of the people on Earth have one. When you are born, we joke that you would be assigned a phone number. You would die if you didn’t answer the phone. We never imagined that there would be a thing called the internet. That didn’t exist in 1973. Digital cameras did not exist in 1973. The large-scale integrated circuit did not exist in 1973. There are breakthrough that we could not have imagined.