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30 Years of Cell Phone Calls
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.
If only we could have stopped it then...
I had the First Cell Phone Ring
First cancer post for Naomi
30 years ago was 2003? Jesus, somebody must have signed me up for a subscription, because I'm getting stories from the distant future!
They that would sacrifice their
1) "Can you hear me now?"
2) "Wow! I have a cell phone! I'm popular!"
3) "Big Ben, This here's Rubber-Duck, and i'm about to lay the hammer down."
4) "Hold on, I can't drive and do this at the same time."
Bowie J. Poag
If that was 30 years ago, today is... 3 Apr 2033. Damn! Time flies!
Unfortunatly, Cooper made the call from a nearby movie theatre during a dramatic scene, thus being not only the first cell phone caller, but the first guy with cell phone to create feelings of distain and loathing from the surrounding populace.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist
Do you think his first words were "ha ha! beat you!"?
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
So what did they talk about in first call? Just called to another, and shouted "FIRST CALL!"?
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
Did it come with a trolley to push it around on?
Yes, I realise it was an impressive feat at the time, but considering my phone is less than a tenth of the weight of that, it seems impossibly heavy.
YOU ONE FUNNY FAGGOT!!!
1) What...?
First annoying ringtone.
First person to make a phoner call during a film.
First person to say "I'm on the train loudly for the benefit of everyone else to hear"
First person top get their credit card details stolen because they didn't realise that anyone sitting nearby can hear everything they say.
Those were the days - cell phones which didn't get lost down the back of the couch and could double as a lethal weapon. Not like the girly things you get these days. Back in those days, the designers understood that a cell phone is an extension of your manhood, and made them with presence. And they call it progress! I don't know....
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
He tried to say "LOGON" but he lost the signal at "LOGO..."
or that could have been the Internet one
EAT A COCK!
Dyna-Tac (1973)
Features: Talk, listen, dial
Really, when it comes down to it, do you need anything else? Sure, text messaging is a bonus and games are fun(ish) when you're stuck in a traffic jam but you only need to be able to dial, talk and listen to ruin someone's cinema experience.
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
Hello this is Dr. Cooper. Can you call me back please because my batteries are running emp
My karma ran over your dogma
I'm on the train......
With apologies to Private Eye.
Maybe you live in interesting times
Well I never realized these things were that old. I remember in the Netherlands we first had the kermit (green phones) that had to be very near to access points. Back then we used to laugh at people making a cellular call.
:-)
With the arrival of Libertel (now Vodafone) in 1995 I took my first subsscription. I remember getting the phone for donating a small amount (about $10) to the red cross.
The first few phones were big, heavy and had very little battery-life compared to modern cellphones
Wow this sure brings back memories
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
OMG WOULDN'T IT BE WAY FUNNY IF I POSTED SOMETHING LAME TO SLASHDOT LIKE "HIS FIRST MESSAGE WAS 'KIN YEW HEAR ME NOW? GOOD!' HAR HAR HAR JESUS CHRIST I'M A FUNNY PERSON!!!!" BLAM BLAM BLAM WITH THE GUN, HACK WHACK WITH THE KNIFE. YOUR DEAD FUCKING HEAD DOWN THE TOILET
Shut the fuck up, man. I wish that, for once in your miserable motherfucking lives, you idiots would post something 'hilarious' to Slashdot about a silly-ass story that, By God needs a long groupings of hilarity to at least give us a bit of a chuckle in this post Gay-Ass-Slashdot-April-Fools-Horseshit world in which we live. CAN NOT YOU SEE THAT THIS SAD LIFE OF OURS NEEDS HUMOR (or 'humour' as speakers of the archaic dialect tend to misspell the word)?
In closing, as I swish down this last drop of partially-frozen sangria wine before heading off to bed, is that I prefer it when somebody takes the time and effort to make a whimsical, witty, intelligent post and OH MY THE LAKE IS A-BURNIN' said post gets moderated up, up, up into the stratsphere of Plus Five.
Goodnight and Good Riddance you sober motherfucks. When the world collapses in on itself, remember fools, that us winos will inherit what's left of this rock and stumble and climb atop one another, scrabbling and clawing for that last swig out of the Night Train (it's fortified! folks) bottle.
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
In Finland, building of commercial wireless ARP (car radio phone) network started in 1969 and network was in use a year later.
In early 1980s first multinational cell phone network (NMT) was already in use in Scandinavia.
More information about telecommunication history can be found here.
ring...ring...
Hello?
Hear this byotch? It's the sound of me 0wnz0ring you!
Now Slashdot started post stories from 2033.
It may well be 30 years since the first cellphone call, but it's three years since the NYT article was written . . . couldn't you find something a little more up to date?!
P
"30 years ago, 3rd April 2003 Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call"...
It is also apparently obvious that Dr. Cooper placed that call while driving a DeLorean.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
30 years ago, 3rd April 2073 Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist... ironically they were both driving SUV's and crashed into eachother... and it was good...
GSM is a digital standard in Europe, and many other countries. "GSM for Iraq!" by the way :-|
GSM.
SMS/MMS.
Some of my tutors have seen the logic port prototypes of the first GSM phone, and that took several trollies to cart around.
Then they were able to make a portable version. Well, portable, I guess it weighed over 10 kg, and was carried in a "backpack" configuration. Like those field radioes you see in Vietnam war movies, only twice as big and heavy.
I saw a picture of one guy on a testing trip with that thing on, and cross country skis, visiting a cabin in Norway. He'd better stay on his feet. Ouch! Not to mention all the damaged tech.....
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
One of my university tutors, a Ph.D. in circuit design, told the students about the first working GSM phone, made with standard logic components. It was, I think, some 4 or 5 heavy boxes, about 50cm x 50 cm x 50 cm. And you did need a trolly unless you were participating in "the Strongest Man in the World Contest".
But, of course, they only made one of those....
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
They don't mention it in the article but Martin Cooper is only 2 feet tall. The phone he's holding is actually a mere six inches long.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Don't you know, were' on MST now--you should have set your calendar ahead 30 years on the first of April.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
They compare the old phone to a "new" (1999) Nokia 8860. I still have one of those - it is nice and shiny, but wasn't that terrific a phone - but I guess still better than a brick from 1973.
I should pop over to EBay and see if anyone is still buying the Nokia 8860s - I never use mine anymore since I have the 8890 now.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I hate talking on the bloody things, and text messages are so handy.
Well, considering the olden-days them things are about the size of a 4-year old child (and just as heavy) - and these days we have wrist phones as per previous /. story (ok ok, it's only PHS - but real cellphones are getting pretty easy to lose now - look at one of those ultra-thin samsung ones that Sprint offer), anybody (conan-the-early-adopters, especially) figure that the cellphone size (volume, let's say) follows or exceeds moore's law?
I would think it should - but anyhoo...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I remeber my first cell phone. It was analgo and was the Nokia Ringo (Ring-Go). Absolutly horrible phone and was like carrying around a small brick. Now many years down the line I've got a Nokia 7650 which can take photos, texting, is digital and is still the size of a small brick :)
Of course I could just get a Nokia 7250 but thats not the point
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
> 30 years ago, 3rd April 2003 Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist. Hey, my mobile is ringing, perhaps it's Coopler calling me! Well, there should be someone here today who has answerd his call ;)
NMT was more or less a copy of AMPS which was developed by Motorola and AT&T.
It's in the paper, so you know that's a fact.
In 1990 - two years before GSM was launched - the United States had a single country-wide cellular radio system (AMPS) and Europe had a hodgepodge of incombatible standards (NMT, TACS, etc.) In 1990 an American could drive between New York and Washington DC and have AMPS coverage the whole way... while a European could not drive from Antwerp to Aachen (about 1/3 the distance) without having to use a different phone.
America invented cellular, but our pro-competitive government thought it would be a good idea to let a variety of 2G standards (DAMPS, CDMA, Nextel) to compete against each other in the market, and killed it. Thank you Ronald Reagan.
While competition was creating a patchwork quilt of cellular standards in the US, the Europeans developed GSM and agreed to use the SAME standard in all the European countries.
Today, I can take use my GSM phone in 100 countries (even the US), but I can't use a CDMA phone in all 50 states.
Thus did "Old Europe" kick the shit out of the New World.
i.e., We did it to ourselves.
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.
..shouldnt his rival be honored for having invented a device that could recieve the call?
That would be the hard part.....
Oh, that's right, this is SLASHDOT! These aren't the droids you're looking for... move along, move along...
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
IIT (No longer affiliated with IITRI) calls him "Pa Cell." There's actually a bus stop bench on campus (32nd and State st...if 32nd actually existed through campus. Use your imagination.) that has a B+W photo of him with the quote "Meet Pa Cell."
Graduate from a shitty college in the ghetto, start my own comm company, get my face plastered on a bus stop bench. Now I FINALLY have a goal in life!
They failed to mention it in the article, but since the DynaTac was such a huge and priceless piece, it came with its own anti-theft measures... Simply take the phone, throw it at the head of the thief, and watch him go down from the impact of that huge thing.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
3 december 1950 was the first automatik cell phone call made by Sture Lauhrén.
:-)
s .p df
An recent interview with Sture is availble here (in swedish) http://www.aftonbladet.se/it/0001/03/mobil.html
1955 Stockholm, Sweden has a working cell phone system.
More on the topic can be found here (in english
http://neptunus.approach.se/pdf/1_2001_The_Root
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.
"HELLO? NO, I'M IN AN ART GALLERY. No, IT'S ALL RUBISH. OK, CHOW!"
(lower caps to pass the filter - muster)
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!
:-) I think these carphones were more "radio phones" than cell phones that we think of today.
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
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Good!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Correct me if I'm wrong, but ARP was not a cellular network, but a semi-automatic network with a bunch of base stations and uplink channels.
A similar car phone network, but smaller than ARP, was in place in Chicago during the 1930s. Al Capone used a car phone -- but not a CELLULAR phone.
This article is not about car phones, it's about CELLULAR phones.
BIG difference. Non-cellular car phones are, for all intents and purposes, more powerful versions of the wireless phone you have in your house hooked to a PBX. Cellular phones do things like frequency and tower-hopping in order to keep a customer connected along a very large geographic area.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
the anniversary of the first drunk cell phone call at 3AM to Cooper's ex-girlfriend.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
To his rival: "Dr. Watson, don't come here. I don't want you."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
One side of the phone call to the rival scientist: Eh? No, it works well What? Well my brain does feel a bit warm now you mention it. Why are you laughing? Really? You're working on some kind of oven instead of the cell phone now? Look I'm going under a bridge, talk later.
hmmmmm.....
i guess i must be safe....
Ya, and the signal coverage at the spot the first call was made from is probably still spotty...
They didn't cause interference to hearing aids like mine. These days, many digital cellular phones interfere my hearing aids. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"The person you are trying to call is out of the service area at this time. Please try your call again later."
The first cell phone call was this:
"lo! -'m -alling -ou -rom my -ell phone! Can -ou speak -ouder? -'m -aving -rouble -earing -ou! I'll -all ou -ack -rom a land -ine!"
"If I have to have a friend of mine (who has already offered to) show up on your doorstep and beat your ass bloody, I'll do that too."
jesus.
"No, it's not a pay phone, it's a CELLULAR PHONE!"
-the only scene from "That '80s Show" that anyone has ever seen.
And according to this article, the Designated Hitter is also celebrating it's 30th birthday. Even then it was the geeks vs. the jocks!
Peace. Sway
Go not unto the Usenet for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (and .sig somewhere
quite a few things that just have nothing at all to do with the question).
-- seen in a
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...