• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

40 years ago today

Share this page

NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Bronze
Offline
The first cell phone call!

On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment in front of reporters, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2963619.stm

The original cell phone, held by Martin Cooper:

View attachment 26604

For the first decade or two, people talked to each other. Now ... I think they text. As a young friend told me last weekend, "it's a lot easier to leave a message than listen to someone."

The illusion of companionship?

(Can you hear me now?)

Tom
 
Funny, We had a "Portable"?? "cell"? phone that the battery was in a pouch carried on a shoulder strap. The phone weighed approx. 1 pound and the battery weighed aprox. 4 pounds. Really, no kidding! I can't remember the year, but I think it was around 1960, could be way off on the date. You had to pull an antenna out of the phone that was about 3 foot long. Believe it or not, it looked a lot like the one illustrated in your post. We also had a movie camera that had a separate very heavy battery that was also carried in a shoulder pack. Don't you just love modern technology!:highly_amused: PJ
 
Around '74, I had a student who had a "car phone". It had a long whip antennae and was probably more of a "radio-phone". The student shared the car with his father, who was a business associate of Carlos Gambino.

I work with a bunch of ex-Murray Hill / Bell Labs guys and a lot of them know Joel Engel (the other guy mentioned in the article).

Lots of stuff came out of those labs.

My former office-mate, Dom, worked at Murray Hill and was a tech assistant to Schockley and Bardeen (they were two of the main guys to develop the transistor). Dom gave me a sample of one of the first experimental transistors ever develped at Murray Hill. It's an ugly little thing......I have it here on my desk.
 
Something like this?

first-transistor.jpg
 
Back
Top