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| Martin Cooper- Father of the Cellular Phone |
The mobile phone turned 40 on April 3. For many of us
cellphones are an extension of ourselves. This revolutionary device turned
quietly 40. Cellphones, however, weren’t available commercially till a decade after
that first call on April 3, 1973 on the device.
The first mobile call was placed on April on April 3, 1973,
by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, head of a team working on mobile
communication technologies. He made the call to Joel Engle, head of research at
rival Bell Labs. Cooper’s phone weighted about 1.2 kg, was more than 25cm in
length and its battery life was just 20 minutes. Cooper and his team were
honoured earlier this year with the Draper Prize by the National Academy of
Engineering for their work. In 40 years, the industry has come a long way.
In 1983, after the US Federal Communications Commission
approved the establishment
of mobile telephony, Motorola came out with the first
commercial cellphone. The Motorola DYNATAC 8000 X, aka “The Brick”, had battery
life of 30 minutes after ten hours of charging and cost $3,995.
In 1989, the first flip phone, the MOTOROLA MICROTAC, was
launched with a price tag of $ 3,000. The year 1993 marked the launch of the
first SMARTPHONE, the IBM Simon Personal Communicator, priced at $899.
The NOKIA 5110, which boasted of talktime of three hours and
featured the popular Snake game, was launched in 1998.
The ultra-thin MOTOROLA RAZAR V3 with talktime of 7 hours
was launched. ‘Slim is in’ was the mantra in 2004. The year 2007 marked a
revolution in mobile devices with the launched of Apple’s iphone, which cost
$499 for the 4GB version.
The year 2013 marks the launch of several flagship products
such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, the Sony Xperia Z, and LG Nexus 4.
