What is a cell phone
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AT&T's research arm, Bell Laboratories, introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947. But Motorola and Bell Labs in the sixties and early seventies were in a race to incorporate the technology into portable devices.
Cooper later revealed that watching Captain Kirk talking in his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him to research the mobile phone.
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.
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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 |
In 1973, the company installed the base station to handle the first public demonstration of a phone call over the cellular network. At the same time Motorola was trying to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to allocate frequency space to private companies for use in the emerging technology of cellular communications.
On April 3, 1973, standing on a street near the Manhattan Hilton, Mr. Cooper decided to attempt a private call before going to a press conference upstairs in the hotel. He picked up the 2-pound Motorola handset called the Dyna-Tac and pushed the "off hook" button.
The phone came alive, connecting Mr. Cooper with the base station on the roof of the Burlington Consolidated Tower (now the Alliance Capital Building) and into the land-line system. To the bewilderment of some passers-by, he dialed the number and held the phone to his ear.
Who is Martin Cooper?
Cooper grew up in Chicago and earned a degree in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technologyin 1950 and received his master's degree from the same institution in 1957. After four years in the navy serving on destroyers and a submarine, he entered the telecommunications industry.
Hired by Motorola in 1954, Mr. Cooper worked on developing portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago police department in 1967. Mr. Cooper spent 29 years with Motorola, building and managing its paging and cellular businesses and served as Corporate Director of Research and Development. He lefft Motorola to co-found Cellular Business which was later sold to Coincinnati Bell.
Cooper then went on in 1993 to be the CEO and founder of ArrayComm, a company based in San Jose, California that works on researching smart antenna technology and improving wireless networks.
Martin Cooper received the American Computer Museum's George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Award in 2002, he was an inaugural member of RCR's Wireless Hall of Fame, Red Herring magazine named him one of the Top 10 Entrepreneurs of 2000, and Wireless Systems Design provided him with the 2002 Industry Leader award. He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology
