HISTORY OF CELL PHONE

Martin Cooper invented the cell (mobile) phone. He was the first one to make a call and speak on his moble phone.

Mr Cooper, born December 26, 1928, wanted people to be able to carry their phones with them anywhere. While he was a project manager at Motorola in 1973, Cooper set up a base station in New York with the first working prototype of a cellular telephone, the Motorola Dyna-Tac. After some initial testing in Washington for the F.C.C., Mr. Cooper and Motorola took the phone technology to New York to show the public.

The First Cellphone (1973)
Name: Motorola Dyna-Tac
Size: 9 x 5 x 1.75 inches
Weight: 2.5 pounds
Display: None
Number of Circuit Boards: 30
Talk time: 35 minutes
Recharge Time: 10 hours
Features: Talk, listen, dial

 

History of Wireless Phones

•    MTS (1946 to 1984)

Mobile Telephone Service. This system was introduced in 6-17-1946. Also known as Mobile Radio-Telephone Service.This was the founding father of the mobile phone. This system required operator assistence in order to complete a call. These units do not have direct dial capabilities.

•         IMTS (1964 to Today)

Improved Mobile Telephone System. This system was introduced in 1969 to replace MTS. IMTS is best known for direct dial capabilities. A user was not required to connect to an operator to complete a call. IMTS units will have a keypad or dial similar to what you will find on a home phone.

•          AMPS (1983 to 2010)

Advanced Mobile Phone System. This system was introduced in 1983 by Bell Systems, the phone introduced by Motorola in 1973 and released for public use in 1983 with the Motorola 8000. AMPS also known as 1G and cellular, should not be confused with its European counterparts such as NMT, ETACS/TACS or JTACS.

Motorola's first commercial cell phone cost $3,995

Yesterday was one of those days when I thought technology just couldn’t get any more awesome. I didn’t think that because I saw something new, edgy or even groundbreaking. No, it was as retro as it gets actually. I got into a conversation with an older gentleman about what smartphones are really all about, and what they are good for. Yeah, you know, he was one of those people who truly doesn’t own a computer, and he knows even less about what the hell the Internet is all about. It was a really interesting conversation where features no longer meant anything, but the size of the screen did. It was a peculiar experience really.

The whole thing ended with him busting out his own cell phone, and it was at that moment when I started experiencing the retrofication of time. The phone that this particular gentlemen displayed was a Nokia 3110. Yup, you know, one of those blueish plastic ones with a monochrome screen. My jaw dropped! I wasn’t surprised because he had an old cell phone, of course I have seen people with those before, but it was the fact that it was in such good condition. I swear it looked like it could have been bought yesterday. The point of the story is that I totally couldn’t believe that this person had been using this cell phone for over 10 years, and it was still working. It charged just like it did back when it was new. It’s amazing what technology is capable of. I wonder how long the batteries will last in an iPhone. I mean, usually these things wear out quite fast.

To take a detour, did you know that the first REAL mobile phone was actually displayed in 1922? Well, it is true and there is a video to prove it. This little clip was elegantly shot back in 1922 as mentioned, and it shows two women carrying a box with a ton of cords on it. They wire it to a water post and then start calling. The umbrella that one of the ladies has is actually functioning as an antenna. This is just badass considering that the first ever call on a phone was made in 1898. Just wow!

Revealed: The world's first mobile phone was the size of a dustbin lid - and had a range of just half a mile in 1902

It was the size of a dustbin lid and had a range of just half a mile.

The world's first mobile phone could hardly be more different to today's devices, which are small enough to slip inside a pocket and can call almost anywhere in the world.

But its inventor, Nathan Stubblefield, is finally being recognised as the father of mobile phone technology exactly 100 years after he patented his design for a "wireless telephone".

The melon farmer came up with his invention in 1902 after devoting every spare hour and penny he had to establishing a telephone service in his rural home-town of Murray, Kentucky.

Field test: Receiver in hand, Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates his invention in his orchard (the mast can be seen in the centre of the picture)

He constructed a 120ft mast in his orchard, which transmitted speech from one telephone to another using magnetic fields.

However, the total amount of wire required for the coils in the phones was far longer than what would be required to simply connect them - but the invention allowed mobility.

The self-taught electrician demonstrated his device in the town's public square on New Year's Day in 1902, broadcasting music and speech to five receivers.

And in 1908 he patented a new version designed to communicate with moving vehicles such as stagecoaches and boats.

Unfortunately, his phones were not commercially successful in his lifetime and he died virtually penniless in 1928.

But now a book has credited him with being the father of the modern mobile phone and he is being honoured with his very own page on the Virgin Mobile website to mark the anniversary of his creation.

Virgin's founder Sir Richard Branson said: "Nathan is the father of the mobile phone and I'm thrilled we can celebrate the 100-year anniversary of his invention that in some way went on to change the way the world communicates."

Professor of journalism Bob Locke, author of a 2001 book called Kentucky Farmer Invents Wireless Telephone!, said Stubblefield was a pioneer who had never been given enough credit for his invention.

"It is very hard to be absolutely-sure that he invented the world's first mobile phone but he was definitely granted the first patent," he said.

"So it is very likely on that basis that he invented the first one but his invention never really took off.

"It was quite impractical and people did not really have the foresight at the time to see where it might end up.

£Stubblefield was a good man who just wanted to help his local community by connecting the houses, which were some distance from each other, with a telephone service."

Sadly, Stubblefield never sold a single unit of his design.

He had always been obsessively secretive and never allowed his family to leave the farm without him, and was loath to let visitors on to his property because he feared they might steal his inventions.

His family - he had six children - lived in abject poverty, with any spare money funnelled into his electrical experiments.

His wife left him and Stubblefield lived the last decade of his life as an itinerant hermit.

He died in 1928 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

There are an estimated 2.5billion mobile phone handsets in use worldwide.

• As many as 10,000 mobile phones are stolen every month in the UK.

• Thirteen per cent of UK households have a mobile phone instead of a landline.

• There are 95 mobile phones for every 100 people in Europe.

• Six million mobiles are bought every month in India.

• There are more than 50,000 mobile phone masts in the UK.

• A Swedish study found using a mobile phone for ten years or more increases the risk of ear tumours by four times.

• Ninety per cent of under-16s in Britain own a mobile and one in ten spends more than 45 minutes a day using it, according to one survey.

Story of the First Mobile Phone

Prior to the development of mobile phones, people used two-way radios to communicate while they were mobile. The idea behind two-way radios gave rise to the invention of mobile phones. During the 1940s, Motorola came up with the Walkie-Talkie followed by handheld two-way radios that operated on battery power.

In 1947, Douglas Ring and W. Rae Young at Bell Labs introduced the idea of hexagonal cells for mobile phones. Philip Porter at Bell Labs came up with the idea that the cell towers should be at the corners of the hexagonal cells and not at their centers. He also proposed that the cell towers should have directional antennas.

Ericsson came up with an automatic mobile phone system, which was released in Sweden in 1956. It was known as MTA and did not require manual control. The drawback of this system was that the phones weighed 40 kg. The year 1965 witnessed the introduction of a revised mobile phone technology that was based on DTMF signaling and used lighter mobile phones. Till 1970, mobile phones had to remain within their cell area and there were no means to continue communication while switching between cell areas. The call handoff system that allows users to move through different cell areas came up only in 1970. It's invention is attributed to Amos E. Joel, Jr, a Bell Labs engineer. The ARP network in Finland, established in 1971, boasts of being the first successful commercial mobile phone network.