Forty years ago Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile phone call by calling a competitor at another telecoms company, telling them he was speaking from "a real cellular telephone". VoR’s Daniel Cinna reports on the legacy of Cooper's first call.
The early days: The first mobile phone was around nine inches long, weighed more than a kilogram and the battery lasted for just 20 minutes, but took 10 hours to charge - quite different from what we are used to today. But 40 years ago today, using the first mobile phone, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile phone call. The recipient? His rivals at AT&T in America, to say that he’d beaten them to the discovery, which paved the way to an £800bn mobile telecoms industry. Unheard-of: Dr Mike Short is from the Institute of Engineering and Technology: “It was absolutely amazing because until then there had been police car to police car type communication. But the idea of calling someone on a landline from a radio device was unheard of. It was a major technical breakthrough in the sense that it was portable, even though it was very heavy, and it was able to allow Martin Cooper to ring his rivals and say ‘how does the call quality sound on this call?’” As the first mobile phones went to market, they were aimed mainly at businessmen; costing over £4,500 just for the handset. Mobile revolution: It wasn’t until the 1990s that mobile phones became smaller and more affordable enough for virtually everyone to own. Matt Warman is Consumer Technology Editor at the Daily Telegraph: “What happened since the first phone call in 1973 has been an even bigger revolution than Martin Cooper envisaged. We have seen mobile phones turn into computers, which in 1973 filled entire rooms. We can also do things with a mobile phone that used to require separate devices. The world that the mobile phone has ushered in was almost unimaginable when it was first invented,” he says. Today most mobiles can access the internet and with the rollout of 4G technology, they can access the World Wide Web at speeds previously reserved for computers. Lifestyle companions: However, mobiles are not just being used for sending text messages and voice calls, but to watch television, read books and magazines – and even to monitor blood pressure. Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor at the Daily Telegraph says technology in mobile phones is becoming more integrated into our lives: “GoogleNow is the obvious example. It’s an app which looks at what you’re doing and tries to guess what you want to do next. So if you are standing at a bus stop it will sense where you are, that you are at a bus stop and then show you when the next bus is due. What it will start doing increasingly is things like automically checking in for you when you have booked a flight. It will increasingly be able to guess more accurately what it is you want to do.” Google Glass: Many technology experts also predict the rise of wearable technology like Google Glass. It’s a tiny computer mounted onto a glasses frame which connects to the internet. Google Glass reacts to voice commands from the user and projects displays onto a lens. 'Dick Tracy' watch: But such technology is not just reserved for eyewear. Reports in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, say that Apple is working on a “wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the tasks handled by the iPhone”.Exciting news for technology enthusiasts like Dr Mike Short: “I find that very exciting. I can’t predict what the next 40 years will look like, but we will get more choice in terms of services and devices. The devices will take many forms; whether they are small screen or large screen; wearable or inside a machine. The Dick Tracey watch phone is certainly in reach this year.” Too much choice? Experts say the real revolution will not just be wearable technology, but what services like Google Now, as part of a mobile phone, can do for us. But it’s a controversial move. Many are concerned that such so-called services will result in an invasion of privacy and could, in the long term, stop people thinking for themselves.Daniel Cinna, Source: Voice of Russia - UK Edition
