The father thinks we’ll eventually have devices in our skin
Martin Cooper: The First Person to Call from a Cellular Device and Why Does He Make That Call? A Conversation with Cooper on “Wall Street”
Who is he? Martin Cooper — aka the father of the cellphone, and former head of Motorola’s communications systems division — and the first person to ever make a call from a cellphone.
While cell phones would not be available to the average consumer for another decade, anyone walking by Cooper on the street that day could have seen history being made.
The research arm of AT&T that had developed the transistor and other innovations was at the center of a cell phone development battle for months prior to the first call.
“They were the biggest company in the world, and we were a little company in Chicago,” Cooper recalled. “They just didn’t think we were very important.”
“You could tell I was not averse to rubbing his nose in this thing. He was polite to me,” Cooper told CNN. “To this day, Joel does not remember that phone call, and I guess I don’t blame him.” CNN was not able to make contact with him.
After Cooper’s first call, manufacturing issues and government regulation slowed the progress bringing the phone to the public, he said. Cooper recalls that the Federal Communications Commission, where he is now an adviser, was struggling to sort out how to split up radio channels to ensure competition.
A version of the DynaTAC phone that costs $3,900 would be available 10 years from now. The small phone that Gordon Gekko used in “Wall Street” weighed around 2.5 pounds and was about a foot tall.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that the modern cell phone took off, as it shrunk way down in size and 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.
Calling you from a cellphone. A real cellphone, a personal handheld, portable cellphone. How Do you know what I’m talking about?
Cooper believes that too many engineers are wrapped up in technology and the gadgets, hardware, and forget that the whole purpose of technology is to make people lives better. I have to remind people of that. The aim is to improve the human experience. 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 likes to track his swimming activity and connect his hearing aids to his phone by using the Apple Watch. Cooper believes that the technology is net positive for society.
I said, “I’m calling you from a cellphone. A real cellphone. A personal, handheld, portable cellphone.” You notice I was not averse to rubbing his nose in our achievement.
1973: The Internet and Computer Science Didn’t Exist Back When Everyone Had a Smartphone (The Case Ignored the Internet, Cameras, and Other Microcomputers)
We knew back in 1973 that someday, everybody would have a cellphone, and we’re almost there. About two-thirds of people have one. The joke said that when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number. If you didn’t answer the phone, you’d die. The internet was something we did not think would happen. In 1973, that didn’t exist. Digital cameras didn’t exist in 1973. In 1973, the large-scale integrated circuit didn’t exist. There were discoveries that we just could not have imagined.
