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30 Years of Cell Phone Calls

Posted by michael on from the ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring dept.

freitasm writes "30 years ago, 3 April 1973, Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist. The NY Times has an article about the "crime scene". Dr Cooper now works as CEO of Arraycom." There's also a story on siliconvalley.com.

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe first in America... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually Ericsson and The Swedish Telecom developed a cellphone prototype back in 1950 and Sture Lauhrén made the first call on the 3rd of December.

    In 1955 the first automatic mobile phone system was launched in Stockholm to the public.

  2. cell phone?? by lfourrier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    what is interesting with cell phone is not the portable phone, it is the cell(s).
    So when was the first cell boundary crossing without dropping the conversation?
    That would be a date to remember.

  3. Early "cell" phones by Alioth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My Dad used to be a salesman for Nacanco (a can making company). In about 1980, they equipped their sales force with car-phones. They had a whole fleet of Ford Cortinas with (presumably at the time) very expensive car phones!

    The car phone looked a bit like a CB with a normal telephone handset attached instead of a CB mike. You didn't have a phone number as such, you had a call-sign. My Dad's was "Amber zero eighty six". You had to manually change the cell you were in with a switch on the front of the CB-like unit. The units came with a map to tell you where you should switch cells.

    The bit you talked into was like a normal phone handset connected to the CB-like bit. Except it was half duplex and had a push-to-talk switch, so you were encouraged to say "Over" after you were done saying something to the person at the other end. The phones were incapable of dialing a number - you picked them up, and spoke to an operator who dialled the call for you, and then called you back when the other end answered. The operator couldn't tell who was calling - you had to give them your callsign so they could call you back.

    The phones were made to ring (as far as I could tell - I wasn't very old at the time) by some kind of analogue tone signalling broadcast. When the phone recognised its tone sequence, it'd start to ring (well, beep loudly actually). The AirCall operator would then connect you to whoever called (or the party you were calling, if you were trying to make an outgoing call).

    It was trivial to use the equipment to listen to everyone elses calls, too :-) I think these carphones were more "radio phones" than cell phones that we think of today.

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