Posted on 04/03/2013 12:47:22 PM PDT by ThinkingBuddha
Much has changed, but cell phone inventor Motorola's legacy lives on at new parent Google
It was a spring day much like this one when Martin Cooper used his Motorola DynaTAC cell phone prototype to place a call in downtown Manhattan. The year was 1973 and it was the third day of April. The call lasted about 20 minutes and much like today's users, Mr. Cooper suffered a familiar problem -- a drained battery.
I. The First Phone Call -- 40 Years Ago Today
Mr. Cooper recalls, "The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo and you could only talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out. Which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer."
A fun fact about the call -- as told in a story by The Verge last year -- the famous first call was actually placed to Mr. Cooper's archrival Joel Engel from Bell Systems. Mr. Engel headed a team that was competing with Mr. Cooper's team at Motorola. But it was Mr. Cooper's team that perfected cellular technology first, thus ultimately shaping the industry that emerged over the next decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
“The Brick”
Man I can imagine the inside of that thing packed with circuit boards and discreet components. Must have been fun to service.
Now, why don’t the old WATS phones in cars and boats count as mobile? Heck Humphrey Bogart used one in the ‘50s in “Sebrina”.
It got real WARM after 30 mins on calls. And I swear I saw smoke coming out of the charging stand, a couple of times.
Look how bulky that thing was. Radio technology has sure come a lone way!
Cellular phone systems divided up the territory into multiple cells which were served by groups of radios on multiple frequencies. As the user moves, there are handoffs between cells and frequencies, which requires computer control. So this technology was not around before computers and frequency control became sufficiently sophisticated (and compact).
Too many of them are like today's teenagers who think their generation invented sex. Somehow, they just can't imagine how people reproduced before their discovery.
don’t laugh, from this phone came an even greater product, the shake weight.
They do? I thought they just sent each other pics of their "junk" like Weiner did.
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