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EvenBob
EvenBob
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April 8th, 2012 at 4:44:24 PM permalink
39 years ago this week, the inventor of the cell phone,
Martin Cooper, made the very first cell phone call.

"In 1973, when Motorola installed a base station to handle the first public demonstration of a phone call over the cellular network, the company was trying to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to allocate frequency space to private companies for use in the emerging technology of cellular communications. After some initial testing in Washington for the F.C.C., Cooper and Motorola took the cellular phone technology to New York to demonstrate it to reporters and the public.

On April 3, 1973, standing on Sixth Avenue in New York City near the New York Hilton hotel, Cooper made a phone call from a prototype Dyna-Tac handheld cellular phone before going to a press conference upstairs in the hotel. The phone connected Cooper with the base station on the roof of the Burlington House (now the Alliance Capital Building) across the street from the hotel and into the AT&T land-line telephone system. As reporters and passers-by watched, he dialed the number and held the phone to his ear.

That first call, placed to Joel S. Engel, head of research at Bell Labs, began a fundamental technology and communications market shift toward making phone calls to a person instead of to a place. This first phone weighed about 2.5 lb (1.1 kg).[4][5] It was the product of Cooper's vision for personal wireless handheld telephone communications, distinct from mobile car phones. Cooper has stated that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him to develop the handheld mobile phone."

I wonder what the first app was.
"It's not called gambling if the math is on your side."
EvenBob
EvenBob
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April 8th, 2012 at 4:49:19 PM permalink
Cooper holding the first cell phone.

"It's not called gambling if the math is on your side."
buzzpaff
buzzpaff
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April 8th, 2012 at 5:55:39 PM permalink
That was the first public use. I was a technician for AT&T in 1969. All the cable patrol dispatch guys had cells phones.
I had a buddy who worked for a cell phone company in the late 70's driving all over town and calling in when he got a signal.
Always wondered if that was the basis for the commercial " Can You Hear Me Now "

Anybody remember AT&T great flop, "True Voice " they gave up after a year. They had signed a 10 year contract with a new
clean cut female singer. Their male spokesman had been Dale Robertson. The squeaky clean young lady with the great voice was Whitney Houston. Now you know where her and Bobby Brown got their drug money.... SIGH
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