Amazing 40 years ago tomorrow the first cell phone call was made.

Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first private handheld mobile phone call on a larger prototype model in 1973. This is a reenactment in 2007.

The first cellular phone was the culmination of efforts began at Bell Labs, which first proposed the idea of a cellular system in 1947, and continued to petition the FCC for channels through the 1950s and 1960s, and research conducted at Motorola. In 1960, John F. Mitchell, an electrical engineer who graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology, became Motorola’s chief engineer for its mobile communication products. Mitchell oversaw the development and marketing of the first pager to use transistors.
Motorola had long produced mobile telephones for automobiles, that were large and heavy and consumed too much power to allow their use without the automobile’s engine running. Mitchell’s team, which included Martin Cooper, developed portable cellular telephony, and Mitchell was among the Motorola employees granted a patent for this work in 1973; the first call on the prototype was completed, reportedly, to a wrong number. While Motorola was developing the cellular phone itself, during 1968-1983, Bell Labs worked on the system called AMPS, which became the first cellular network in the U.S. Motorola and others designed cell phones for that and other cellular systems. Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, led a team that produced the DynaTAC 8000x, the first commercially available cellular phone small enough to be easily carried, and made the first phone call from it. The DynaTAC’s retail price, $3,995 ($9209 in present-day terms), ensured that it would not become a mass-market item; by 1998, when Mitchell retired, cellphones and associated services made up two thirds of Motorola’s $30 billion in revenue.
On October 13, 1983, David D Meilahn placed the first commercial wireless call on a DynaTAC from his 1983 Mercedes 380SL to Bob Barnett, former president of Ameritech Mobile Communications, who then placed a call on a DynaTAC from inside a Chrysler convertible to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who was in Germany for the event. The call, made at Soldier Field in Chicago, is considered by many as a major turning point in communications. Later Richard H. Frenkiel, the head of system development at Bell Laboratories, said about the DynaTAC: “It was a real triumph; a great breakthrough.” Wikipedia

Related articles

• Motorola Legend Martin Cooper Awarded Engineering’s Highest Honor (cedailynews.com)