April 3, 1973: The 1st Mobile Phone

Martin Cooper

April 3, 1973: The first call on a mobile telephone is made.

In 1954, Martin Cooper went to work as a senior development engineer in the mobile equipment group at Motorola, Inc. He developed products like the 1st cellular-like portable handheld police radio system, made for the Chicago Police Department in 1967.

Cooper was made the head of Motorola's communications systems division. He knew that Bell Labs had been producing telephones for cars since 1947, but they required 30 pounds of equipment in the car's trunk. Why couldn't there be a cordless telephone that a person could carry with them? A mobile phone, which he thought of as being similar to the wrist radio worn by Dick Tracy in the comic strips. Although, when he explained the idea, people thought it sounded more like the flip-open communicators on Star Trek.

It took 90 days to design, build and test the DynaTAC 8000x -- for "Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage." It weight 2 1/2 pounds and was 10 inches long, and was nicknamed "the brick." It had a battery, which itself weighed several times as much as the smartphones of half a century later. The battery allowed 30 minutes of talk time before requiring a recharge of 10 hours. But Cooper explained: "The battery lifetime wasn't really a problem, because you couldn't hold the phone up for that long!"

On April 3, 1973, outside at the New York City Hilton at 1335 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, Cooper and John Francis Mitchell, Motorola's Chief of Portal Communications Products (and thus Cooper's boss), conducted a press conference to publicly demonstrate their product for the 1st time. Cooper made the call, which connected him to a base station installed on the roof of the Burlington House at 1345 6th Avenue, and into the American Telephone & Telegraph land-line telephone system.

Naturally, he called Joel Engel, his chief competitor, who just so happened to be trying to develop such a phone for AT&T: "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone." It wasn't as dramatic as Alexander Graham Bell's shout of "Watson! Come here! I want you!" in Boston 97 years earlier. But it was one of the great trollings of all time.

With this success, Motorola invested $100 million in the phone's development. Within 10 years, the handset was reduced to half its original weight. In 1996, Motorola introduced the StarTAC, the first "flip phone," which made mobile phones as accessible to people as the Ford Model T made automobiles affordable.

By the time Mitchell died in 2009, pretty much anybody who wanted a mobile phone had one that could, all at the same time, serve as a computer, a calculator, a calendar, a notepad, a library, a radio, a video camera, a flashlight, a bill-paying system, a ticket broker, and, oh yeah, a telephone; and could fit in your pocket. Such a device was a far cry not just from the "brick" that Cooper and Mitchell invented in 1973, or even their first really practical one from 1983, but from the Apple IIe and Commodore 64 personal computers available at that time.

As of April 3, 2022, Marty Cooper is still alive.

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April 3, 1973 was a Tuesday. Baseball's regular season was 3 days away. Football was out of season. And the NBA, the ABA, the NHL and the WHA were all between the end of their regular season and the start of their Playoffs. So there were no scores on this historic day.

February 28, 2014: Mobile Internet Device Users Surpass Desktop Computer Users

February 28, 2014: The number of people in the U.S. using mobile devices to access the internet overtake those using desktop computers for the first time, a feat which would be followed globally in 2016.

Was this a good thing? It means that, now, we can find just about any piece of information we want, anywhere we might be. But, as was previously remarked (by, among others, newspaper columnist William Safer) about the telephone, online communication has harmed face-to-face communication. We are more connected than ever before, and, at the same time, more isolated from each other. Online, we seem to be less "people," and more "accounts."

I think this can be overcome. What journalist Edward R. Murrow once said about the potential, if not enough of the reality, of television, I want to say of the mobile telephone: "This instrument can teach." After all, you can hold in your hand one single device that is, all at the same time, a library, a post office, a department store, a radio station, a television studio from which you broadcast, a newspaper that you publish, a map, a calculator, a calendar, a clock, an alarm clock, a notepad, a flashlight, and, oh yeah, a telephone.

It also makes any old TV show or movie where a mobile phone would be handy obsolete, from the Seinfeld episode "The Parking Garage" to any sitcom episode where anybody is locked in a room -- unless the reception is bad, and they can't get a signal.

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February 28, 2014 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 7 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Golden State Warriors, 126-103 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Utah Jazz, 99-79 at the Quicken Loans Arena (now the Rocket Arena) in Cleveland.

* The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 113-107 at the Chesapeake Energy Arena (now the Paycom Center) in Oklahoma City. Kevin Durant scored 37 points.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Dallas Mavericks, 100-91 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Charlotte Bobcats, 92-82 at the AT&T Center (now the Frost Bank Center) in San Antonio. With the New Orleans team, formerly the Charlotte team, having become the Pelicans, the new Charlotte team was able to adopt the Hornets name the next season.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 116-104 at the US Airways Center (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix. Goran Dragić of the Suns led all scorers on the night with 40. Anthony Davis scored 32 in defeat for the Pels.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Sacramento Kings, 126-122 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the San Jose Sharks, 4-2 at the First Niagara Center (now the KeyBank Center) in Buffalo.

* The Colorado Avalanche beat the Phoenix Coyotes, 4-2 at the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver.

* The Anaheim Ducks beat the St. Louis Blues, 1-0 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

* And the Minnesota Wild beat the Vancouver Canucks, 2-1 in a shootout at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

January 8, 1982: The Breakup of the Bell System

January 8, 1982: The American Telephone & Telegraph Company agrees to settle the federal government's antitrust case against it, by divesting itself into 22 subdivisions, taking effect on January 2, 1984.

I used to say that "The Phone Company" was the one monopoly that everyone liked, and Ronald Reagan, the President at the time, a conservative Republican whom you would think would support it, broke it up. The truth is, though, the case of United States v. AT&T was filed all the way back in the Administration of Gerald Ford, and it was probably being at least considered a few months earlier, under Richard Nixon.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suspected that AT&T was using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network, which was contrary to U.S. antitrust law. The case was filed by the the U.S. Department of Justice on November 20, 1974.

The case was fought over until it was settled on January 8, 1982, by the means of a consent decree between AT&T and the DOJ. It broke "Ma Bell" up into several "Baby Bells," including NYNEX (for New York and New England), Bell Atlantic (for the Middle Atlantic States, including New Jersey), BellSouth, Ameritech for the Midwest, Southwestern Bell and Pacific Bell.

(I remember a news reporter covering a story of Italian-Americans trying to get official recognition that the telephone was invented not in 1876 by Scots-Canadian Alexander Graham Bell, but in 1871 by Italian political figure and scientist Antonio Meucci. The reporter said, instead of "Ma Bell," we should use the name "Papa Meucci." But Meucci's device didn't get the patent, because it didn't meet the qualifications that Bell's device did.)

This led to competition for phone users' service, but it also led to frequent contacts, sales calls -- the phone companies using the phone to harass their would-be customers. It also led to the founding of challenging companies, such as MCI and Sprint. However, in the long run, that led to better development of mobile phones, which eventually combined with computers to create the "smartphones" we have today.

So the breakup of the Bell System was bad in the short term, but good in the long run. Eventually, AT&T did regain much of what it lost, and it got big again. All of which made more people than before think that the logo they adopted in 1984 resembled the Death Star from Star Wars.

"That's no moon... "

The logo they switched to in 2016 isn't much better.

During the 1996 Presidential campaign, politically-themed comedian Mark Russell had one of his periodic TV specials on CBS. One of the Republican candidates was Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Jr., a.k.a. Steve Forbes, son of the founder of Forbes magazine, a business-themed periodical. Russell had this line: "It's a very sexy magazine. This month's centerfold is Ma Bell." Since Russell was already 63 years old, his audience got the joke, and laughed. Although Steve Forbes is still running the magazine in 2022, it's been so long since "Ma Bell" was broken up, half the country wouldn't get the joke today.

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January 8, 1982 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was between rounds of the Playoffs. There was 1 game in the NBA: The Colorado Rockies beat the St. Louis Blues, 7-1 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. Bob MacMillan scored 4 goals. It was a rare good moment for the Rockies, who moved to the Meadowlands before the next season, and became the New Jersey Devils.

And there were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 110-100 at the Rutgers Athletic Center (now the Jersey Mike's Arena) in Piscataway, New Jersey.

* The Boston Celtics beat their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia 76ers, 96-90 at the Boston Garden.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 119-113 at the Chicago Stadium. Magic Johnson scored 32 points in defeat.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 90-88 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Indiana Pacers, 108-102 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.

* And the Denver Nuggets beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 124-121 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Alex English led all scorers on the night with 35 points.