New York (CNN) — On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper stepped out on a Sixth Avenue sidewalk in Manhattan with a device the size of a brick and made the first public call from a cell phone to one of the men he had been competing with to develop the device.
“I’m calling you from a cell phone, but a real one, a personal, cordless, portable cell phone,” Cooper, then a Motorola engineer, told Joel Engel, head of AT&T-owned Bell Laboratories, on the call.
Although cell phones wouldn’t be available to average consumers for another decade, anyone walking past Cooper on the street that day might have seen a historic moment.
In the 50 years since that first call, Cooper’s bulky device has evolved and been replaced by a wide range of thinner, faster phones that are now ubiquitous and are reshaping industries, culture and the way we interact with each other. between us and with ourselves. But while the vast reach and impact of mobile phones may have taken some by surprise, Cooper says the possibility that they would one day be considered essential to much of humanity was clear from the start.
“I’m not surprised that everyone now has a cell phone,” Cooper, now 94, told CNN. “We used to tell the story that one day, when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number. If you didn’t answer, you would die.”
The rise of mobile phones
Four months before the first call, Motorola was competing to make a mobile phone with Bell Labs, the legendary AT&T research arm that had developed the transistor and other innovations.
“They were the biggest company in the world, and we were a little Chicago company,” Cooper recalled. “They didn’t even think we were important”
Martin Cooper, the man who developed the first mobile phone. (Credit: Sandy Huffaker/The New York Times/Redux)
As he recalls, his rival was not happy to receive the call, as Cooper was for calling him.
“You could tell that I was not averse to rubbing his nose in this matter. He was polite to me,” Cooper told CNN. “To this day, Joel doesn’t remember that call and I guess he doesn’t blame him” (CNN could not reach Engel).
After Cooper’s first call, manufacturing problems and government regulation slowed the spread of mobile phones to the public, he says. For example, Cooper recalls the Federal Communications Commission, where he now works as a consultant, struggling to figure out how to divide up radio channels to ensure competition.
It would take a decade for an investment of that DynaTAC (Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) phone to hit the market, to the tune of $3,900. The phone, similar to the one Gordon Gekko had in the movie “Wall Street,” weighed 3 pounds and was about 12 inches long.
Compare that to the iPhone 14, which weighs 5 pounds and is just under 6 inches, or any of the budget Android smartphones that cost $200-$300.
“Trying to improve the human experience”
The modern mobile phone didn’t really take off until the 1990s, when it became smaller and easier to use. Today, 97% of Americans own some form of mobile phone, according to a 2021 study from the Prew Research Center.
In the years since that first call, Cooper has written a book on the transformative power of the mobile phone, founded companies, and gone on speaking tours and media appearances. But not all aspects of modern technological advances are necessarily to his liking.
Motorola Vice President John F. Mitchell demonstrates the ease of use of the company’s new product, the Dyna TAC portable radiotelephone, in New York on April 3, 1973. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)
“Too many engineers focus on what they call technology and the tools, the hardware, and forget that the point of technology is to improve people’s lives,” Cooper says. “People forget, and I have to continually remind them. We try to enhance the human experience. That’s what technology is all about.
Looking back over the last 50 years, however, Cooper largely approves of where the phone has taken us. An iPhone user himself (and Samsung before that), he loves using his Apple Watch to track his swimming activity and connect his headphones to his phone. Cooper believes that technological advances are positive for society.
“I am optimistic. I know that mobile has disadvantages. Some people get addicted to it. There are people walking across the street talking on their cell phones,” says Cooper. “Overall, I think the cell phone has changed humanity for the better and will continue to do so in the future.”