There would be no Uber or Lyft or Google Maps or FaceTime or Instagram or Tinder or Snapchat or TikTok or iPhones or Android phones if someone had not invented the mobile. Fortunately, someone did.
It was Marty Cooper. “I know a lot about the future, because I spend all my time there,” he laughed, “when I should be thinking about practical things today.”
Cooper’s memoirs, “Cutting the Cord” (Rosetta Books), tell the story. He is a native of Chicago, a Navy submarine officer, and finally an executive at Motorola, a manufacturer of police and military radios and, in the early 1970s, the two-way radio known as the car phone.
Those first car phones were no cell phones: “They had a transmitter in a city and a very limited amount of radio channels,” Cooper told correspondent David Pogue. “There were chances that one in 20 could make a phone call, so bad was that service.”
In 1972, the idea of a cellular network was gaining momentum, in which cities would be divided into smaller terrestrial regions (called cells), each with a transmission tower. As it went from cell to cell, the call would be transmitted from one tower to another.
AT&T, Motorola’s much bigger rival, asked the FCC for a monopoly on mobile communications, not to have a view of phones in its pockets, but to expand its car business.
Cooper said, “They were going to take over our business as well as all of this, and they’re going to do it wrong! People had been connected to their desks and kitchens for over 100 years, and now they’re going to connect us to our cars, where we spend five percent of our time. “
Motorola wanted to show that opening up the airwaves to competition would drive more innovation.
“So I thought,‘ How could we do a dazzling demonstration? The only way to do that is to have a job … something, “Cooper said.
Cooper’s team started with design, not technology: “Small enough to fit in your pocket, big enough for it to pass between your ears and mouth,” he explained.
He showed Pogue a model of the first design. “This isn’t a miniature: is this what they really had in mind? It’s a tenth the size of the last one,” Pogue marveled.
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When Motorola added the battery and all the circuits, it grew to this size:
Motorola
In just three months, Marty Cooper had overseen the construction of a mobile phone in operation. Cooper called it DynaTAC. “You could talk for 25 minutes before the phone ran out,” he said.
On April 3, 1973, Cooper made the world’s first public mobile phone call as a demonstration for a journalist.
“So we met this guy on Sixth Avenue in New York City, across from the Hilton,” he recalled. “And then I had to call to prove it.”
And who did he call? Joel Engel, his rival at AT&T. “And I said, ‘Joel, I’m telling you on my cell phone, but a real mobile, a personal and personal portable mobile. ‘Silence at the other end of the line. ”
Mobile phone inventor Marty Cooper made his first public call:
Cooper’s gambit worked. The FCC was so impressed that it opened up the cell industry to competition.
Cooper left Motorola in 1983; since then, he and his wife Arlene Harris, inventor of technology in their own right, have created a number of companies in the cellular industry.
Pogue asked, “Isn’t that general advice for relationships not to work with your partner?”
“We don’t agree on everything,” Cooper said. “But you know, that’s the spice of life, it’s the disagreement, as long as it’s kind.”
Pogue asked Cooper, “But it seems like if there’s a tech dispute, you can’t say,‘ I’ll have to know I’m the father of the cell phone! “Wouldn’t you win automatically?”
Harris left “No.” out of sight.
The mobile has come a long way, but Cooper believes we have only just begun to tap into its potential: “We are only at the beginning. We will revolutionize humanity in many ways. I think the whole education process will be revolutionized. And the others revolutions that will occur will be related to health care. I know I am optimistic, but poverty will be a thing of the past. “
Rosetta Books
Cooper said workers in poorer countries use their cell phones to move money without a bank. “This has stimulated entrepreneurship. It’s saving people’s lives. It’s pulling people out of poverty.”
Cooper is a well-known fitness enthusiast. At 92, he lifts weights and takes walks, sometimes on the beach in front of his house. But he believes mental exercise is even more important.
“If you don’t keep learning all your life (keep an open mind, absorb things, be curious) you lose the ability to learn,” he said. “And for me, that’s the scariest thing of all.”
As for his new book, well, Hollywood has already bought the rights to the film. Pogue asked, “Who will play you in the movie?”
“I was hoping you would, David,” he laughed. “You’re the only star I know.”
“Get your people talking to my people,” Pogue said. “That’s what I find strange, Marty: I know this is a stereotype, but as a 92-year-old, I might expect you to enjoy the stories of the past more than those of the future.”
“Well, I’ve noticed that things in the past have continued to improve, you know?” Cooper replied, “People are richer today. Today they are healthier. We still have a lot of problems, but there is no reason to think we will not continue to improve.”
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Story produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: Emanuele Secci.