On April 3, 1973, fifty years ago today, Martin Cooper, then of Motorola, made the first cellular phone call to Joe Engel of Bell Labs, marking the beginning of a revolution in communications. The event was noted here and there, mostly as a curiosity, but led directly to the ubiquitous mobile phones carried today by over seven billion people.
The original phone pictured above was still in use when the first networks began rolling out around the US around 1983. It was affectionately called “the brick.” As a telephone company lawyer, I was issued one so I could be reached at any time, a negative consequence we all experience today. Because of battery limitations and spotty coverage, I soon also received a three-watt version wired into my car.
Today’s phones can last all day and operate on a milliwatt or less, and thanks first to Apple, have data as well as voice coverage, giving email, text, streaming and Internet service wherever you are.
Cell phones themselves owe their existence ultimately to the invention of the transistor in 1947 by members of Bell Labs, before which electrical devices operated using vacuum tubes to amplify and manipulate analog signals. These were too fragile and consumed too much power for practical mobile uses.
A bit of trivia, which I once heard and still believe to be true is that when AT&T was broken up in 1984, AT&T, which retained its long distance network, chose to cede its mobile networks to the regional operating companies because they never expected mobile phone users to exceed a few hundred thousand. Whether that rumor was true or not, AT&T changed its tune and focus after a time and reacquired the national cellular network we know today.
