Related Sections: Cellphones
The cell phone celebrates its 35th birthday
On April 3rd 1973 inventor Martin Cooper of Motorola placed the first ever cellphone call from a New York City sidewalk. Who did he call? The president of Motorola? No, he called Joel Engel, his rival at Bell Labs; way to rub it in Martin. Cooper says that his inspiration for the device came from watching Captain Kirk from Star Trek talking on his communicator.
In case you hadn't noticed, cell phones have become somewhat smaller in the 35 years since. Martin's model weighed 2 1/2 pounds and had a talk time of 35 minutes, after which you needed to recharge it for 10 hours.
I guess jacket pockets were bigger back then.
From Wired.com
By metalfingers at 11:31 AM ON 04/05/08
I think that you guys may have gotten this story wrong. Martin Cooper was on the NY Times Tech talk podcast for 04/03/2008. In it he clearly states that Captain Kirk had nothing to do with the invention of the cell phone. If you'd like to listen its located at here (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html). Just scroll down to the NYT Tech Talk podcast and press play. He interview starts about 4:36 (or -12:34 as the site display it).
on your cellphone!
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metalfingers:
I think that you guys may have gotten this story wrong. Martin Cooper was on the NY Times Tech talk podcast for 04/...More »