Mobile phones and smartphones have become integral in our daily lives. With them around, we can talk to other people, surf the web, work, take pictures, and even play video games.
This fact is especially true during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when every one of us had to rely on our smartphones and computers to interact with people and work.
However, if we take a time machine to the early 1970s and tell the people of that time that we were able to condense the technology for several devices into a palm-sized gadget, they'd call us madmen.
During that time, mobile phones were not as prolific as today. In fact, it was only then that the idea of the mobile telephone came out, and you wouldn't believe how it got invented.
Here's the story of how the first mobile phone got invented:
Mobile Phones - A Marriage Between Sci-Fi And Reality
It all started during the early 1970s with a man named Martin Cooper, who, at the time, was an employee of Motorola, which is a company embattled with its main competitor, AT&T, for dominance in cellular technology, per How Stuff Works.
However, Cooper didn't want to just compete with AT&T. He wanted to outdo the competition and do something that would give Motorola the lead when it comes to cellular technology, according to Destination Innovation.
The idea of a mobile phone came to him when he was watching "Star Trek," when Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, was using his communicator.
A communicator is a communications device used by "Star Trek's" many species for person-to-person, inter-ship communications, per the Star Trek Wiki. It could be either an intercom or a hand-held personal receiver that could be used for person-to-ship communications.
Watching Kirk use his communicator gave Cooper the idea and inspiration he needed to develop a handheld mobile phone - a revolutionary idea at the time, according to Cooper, per his interview with Telus International.
Cooper and his team took 90 days to develop and create the first portable cellular 800MHz phone prototype.
According to Cooper, it was about ten inches high, two inches wide, and four or five inches deep. It weighs a kilo and has enough battery life to make a twenty-five-minute call.
Even though its battery life was extremely short, it was fine at the time as nobody would use the phone for very long.
The Smithsonian Magazine mentioned in its article that Cooper credited "Star Trek" for the design of the first mobile phone, with Cooper saying, "['Star Trek'] was not a fantasy to us. That was an objective."
Getting The Prototype To The Public
After developing the first mobile phone, Cooper called a press conference to showcase his invention. During the event, he used the mobile phone to make the first call using one, and the first recipient was AT&T Bell Labs' head of research, Joel Engel.
After exchanging pleasantries with Engel, Cooper said, "Joel, I'm calling you from a cell phone. But a real cell phone, a personal, handheld, portable cell phone."
There was nothing but "silence at the other end of the time," Cooper recalled.
The press conference made headlines, causing a sensation fired up by Cooper's call to Engel.
Motorola finally released the first commercial mobile phone to the public in 1983, named the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.
The DynaTAC 8000X was almost the same as Cooper's prototype mobile phone except for its weight, with it weighing only half a kilo.
