On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made the first call using a mobile device. In 45 years, the market has exploded
"At Motorola we've done it, mobile telephony is a reality." A few words are enough to announce a revolution. And these words have changed our era. It was Martin Cooper (now 89 years old), an engineer at Motorola, who announced on April 3, 1973 to Joe Engel, his colleague at Bell Laboratories AT&T, that he had succeeded in making the first call with a mobile device.
A call that has entered by right into the history books and not only into those of technology. Just think about how important mobile telephony is in our time. What would our life be like without smartphones and cell phones? Everything was born almost by chance: according to legend, Martin Cooper got the idea from an episode of Star Trek in which Captain Kirk used a device similar to a cell phone to communicate with the outside world. From there the step towards the first call made with a mobile device was short, also thanks to Motorola's investments.
Ten years to see the first mobile phone
From the call made by Martin Cooper from the streets of New York with a still experimental device to see the first cell phone on the market it took ten years. In 1983 the DynaTAC debuted, an acronym for Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage considered by all to be the first cell phone in history. But the mobile device had very little, since it weighed over a kilo, had a battery that lasted no more than 30 minutes and needed several hours before recharging completely. Not to mention the price tag of nearly $4,000. Best of all, the DynaTAC had no screen. In 35 years the industry has made real leaps and bounds, just think of today's smartphones, heirs of that DynaTAC launched in 1983.