Today, with the immense popularity of the cell phone, it can be sometimes hard to believe that it has not always been a part of our lives. However, despite our society’s current dependency on this pocket-sized gadget, the first cell phone was invented only 40 years ago and has only been available to the public for the last 30 years.
That first cell phone, invented by Martin Cooper in 1973, was based off existing cellular car phone technology. Cooper, who was the general manager of Motorola’s Communications System Division, demonstrated the new technology by calling his competitors at AT&T’s Bell Labs with his 2.2 pound phone. He described the event in his own words:
“As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren’t cordless telephones or cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter – probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.” (source)
Copper spent the next 10 years adapting the phone for the public market. That first phone, the DynaTAC, was first sold in 1983. Nicknamed “the brick,” it was 9 x 5 x 1.75 inches, weighed 2.5 pounds, could talk for 35 minutes, and took 10 hours to recharge. It also cost $3,500.
Despite the costs and the limits of the technology, the demand for the new cell phone quickly outstripped supply. Competitors quickly started developing their own technologies, and the cell phone technology continued to improve as the number of cell phone subscribers continued to increase. In only 7 years, the number of cell phone users in the United States skyrocketed to one million. The technology continued to develop, as phones became smaller, lighter, and had increasing capabilities. Today there are more cell phone subscribers than normal telephone subscribers, with new technology and improvements continuously coming onto the market.
