A Short History

Today the world has embraced the mobile phone. In fact, some countries in Asia and Africa have even leapfrogged other first world countries by implementing a cellular telephone service instead of a more expensive wire based network. The development of the mobile phone system is primarily an American innovation.

Dr. Martin Cooper, a former general manager for Motorola, is credited for being the inventor of the first modern portable radio telephone device.

The first call on a mobile phone was made in April of 1973. That call was made to his rival, Joel Engel, at the Bell Laboratories. Engel was the the head of research for the lab. Bell Laboratories introduced the first idea of mobile communications in 1947 with the implementation of police automobile communications. That idea never really left the police car.

A long wait

Motorola was the first to incorporate the radio technology into a compact device that would allow a user to communicate with a landline telephone or a similar mobile device in a fashion not very different from a regular telephone. Motorola's innovation also allowed for a 'moving' device to make a call without interruption or loss of signal quality, and also without having to be tethered to a large battery pack.
The first prototype mobile network was constructed in 1977 by AT&T and Bell Labs. The first public trials of the system was then started in Chicago with over 2,000 trial customers in 1978.

In reality, however, the first true commercial venture for a mobile telephone system was started in Tokyo, Japan in 1979. It wasn't until 1982, or a full 37 years, that the U.S. finally got its first true commercial mobile phone network up and running. By that time networks in Europe and Asia were already flourishing and fast becoming the tool of choice for a mobile generation.

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