Most people think of cell phones as an everyday necessity and hardly consider them unusual at all. People forget the time when cell phones weren’t everywhere. Think back to the year 1973 when Martin Cooper made the first cellular phone call in New York with hundreds of people staring at him in curiosity. The history of cell phones even goes further back into time. If you really want to understand cell phones then you have to think of Samuel Morse the inventor of the Morse code and the person who exemplified the concept of wireless communications by means of conduction when he transmitted a wireless telegraph signal through water. He was also the first person to make a device that transmitted messages by means of electricity.
In the year 1843, someone else called Michael Faraday undertook a study to see whether electricity could be conducted through space. In the year 1865, a dentist by the name of Dr. Mahlon Loomis became the first person to send a wireless communication through the atmosphere. His idea was to transmit and receive messages by making use of the atmosphere; he sent kites that were covered with copper screens and linked to the ground with copper wires. The U. S Congress gave Loomis a $50,000 research grant for his efforts.
We fast forward into the twentieth century where the concept of the modern day cell phone as we know it became invented. A man known as Martin Cooper was employed by Motorola and was a member of the team that developed the first hand held radios for the Chicago Police Department back in 1967. Later on, he became the head of Motorola’s cellular research division.
AT&T’s, Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communication in 1947.Through the 60’ and 70’s Motorola and Bell Laboratories were in a race to incorporate the technology into portable devices.
On April 3, 1973 Martin Cooper won the race when he placed the first cell phone call to his rival at AT&T.
Cell phones later went public in 1977, with Chicago being the first city to try this new technology out with an initial 2000 customers.
After this Motorola came up with the “DynaTAC” phone which weighed about 16 ounces and went into commercial service in 1983, it also had a pricey cost attached to it : $3,500.The phone took about 10 hours to charge completely and was limited to just 35 minutes of talk time. The only features available were dial listen and talk and the cell phone was nicknamed the Brick.
From 1983 to the end of the 80’s cellular phones or car phones as they were called at the time, were quite popular. Most of these devices weren’t hand held but they were usually installed in cars or bag phones.
The Cellular Technology Industry Association was founded later on in the year 1988.
In the early period of the 1990’s the next generation of phones came into being. These phones were called 2G phones and were capable of working with a number of technologies such as GSM, TDMA, and CDMA technology. 2G digital networks were online and replacing the analog network frequencies, this phased out the latter gradually and cell phones eventually became smaller and much more portable.
Nowadays the cellular phones we have available are mostly of the 3G kind. 3G phones are equipped with a number of innovations which permit people to do a lot more than receive phone calls. 3G phone users can have Internet access as well as email and streaming video.
