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Inventor of Cell Phone: We Knew Someday Everybody Would Have One


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Martin Cooper

Martin Cooper talks on the "DynaTAC," the first commercial cell phone, which hit the market in 1983.

Courtesy of Martin Cooper

In 1973, Martin Cooper changed the world, although he didn't know it yet.

Cooper and his team at Motorola, the communications company, created maybe the only thing that runs the lives of business professionals and teenagers alike—the cell phone.

It was the size of a brick and wasn't commercially sold for another decade. But as Cooper demonstrated on a New York sidewalk, it worked.

The concept of cellular technology had already been created by Motorola's rival, AT&T, whose Bell Labs introduced a system allowing calls to be moved from one cell to another while remaining on the same channel. But AT&T was focusing this technology on the car phone.

From CNN
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