August 10, 2004
Cellular Evolution
"It took decades for an old technology called mobile telephony to take off. But it did take off—and changed the way the world communicates".
Stephanie N. Mehta, in a wonderful must-read 3 page article for Fortune, traces the history of the cell phone up until today.
Excerpts:
"On Oct. 13, 1983, when "Bob Barnett, an executive at Ameritech, sat in a car parked outside Soldier Field in Chicago and made the country's first commercial cellular phone call. He called Alexander Graham Bell's grandson in Berlin. The sound quality wasn't pristine, and the conversation wasn't especially scintillating."
[ Just for the record, the first non commercial cell phone call was made on April 3rd 1973 by Dr Martin Cooper, in a demonstration outside a Hilton Hotel in New York, "that became the first step towards a massive change in the way we communicate". As reported in Dan Gillmore's Sunday Column for the Mercury News. ]
"For nearly a decade after the Chicago launch, wireless service sputtered along, garnering a tepid 7.5 million users by 1992, and it wasn't until the end of the 1990s that cellphones became truly mainstream...
[...] "Cellphones didn't just change the way we communicate with one another—they changed our behavior. When was the last time you used a pay telephone? How often have you turned the car around because you've left your cellphone behind? Do you remember taking a business trip without obsessively checking your voicemail and calling in to the office?
The gentleman on the phone in the picture above, is Dr Martin Cooper on one of the first cell phones.
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