Martin Cooper making the first cell phone call, New York City, April 3, 1973
Photo courtesy of Martin Cooper
You may not recognize the name Martin Cooper, but he’s one of the people responsible for changing the way we communicate. Regarded as the father of the cellular phone, Cooper was on the team that built the first handheld mobile cell phone and who made the first call.
That call took place on April 3, 1973, on a New York City sidewalk. Cooper used a prototype device he helped develop while working at Motorola. The phone weighed roughly 2.5 pounds and has often been referred to as “The Brick.” You could only talk on it for about 20 to 30 minutes before the battery ran down, and it took 10 hours to charge.
The prototype used during the call later evolved into the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which became the first commercially available mobile phone when it hit the market in 1984. With a $3,995 price tag (close to $12,500 today), it was far from a mass-market gadget — but it helped launch the mobile phone revolution.
Cooper made the call to Joel Engel, his rival at Bell Labs. When Engel answered his landline, Cooper couldn’t help the hint of triumph in his voice: “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone, a real, handheld, portable cell phone.”
Before that call, mobile communication systems were limited to car-mounted units or other bulky equipment that required substantial infrastructure.
Although Motorola may lay claim to the first truly mobile telephone, Bell Labs developed the foundational architecture for what became the wireless network. Either way, Cooper’s call to Engel marked the transition from experimental concepts to practical devices and laid the foundation for the global mobile phone industry that followed.