Who Invented The Cell Phone

Have you ever wondered who invented the cell phone? A cell phone used to be nothing more than the old two-way radio handsets that we still use today. What made the cell phone different is that it used technology based on the same concept as the two-way radio but could connect to different cell phone base stations in its area. The coverage offered by these base stations is what gives it its name, cell phone, as each base station coverage area is viewed as a cell.

So when and who was the inventor of the cell phone? The cell phone concept appeared in 1947 when a number of researchers started to improve on the old car phone. This presented many problems for the teams of researchers working on the project. First, the Federal Communications Commission or the FCC regulates anything that uses radio waves. AT&T proposed that the FCC make available more radio frequencies for the concept of the cell phone. By allocating more radio frequencies to the new concept, companies knew that it would make the new cell phone marketable. The FCC by 1947 was not open to the concept and only allowed enough frequency to allow about 23 simultaneous cell phone conversations to be made possible. This limited amount of frequency was not enough to make the cell phone marketable as its use would not be very widespread and would not justify any further research. There was an about-turn in 1968 by the FCC when they allowed further allocations of frequencies to be used on condition that the cell phone technology would need to be improved. It was during this time that AT&T and Bell proposed that the cell phone would use lower power between smaller towers so that the cell phones could reuse the frequencies between the towers. Dr. Martin Cooper from Motorola is viewed as the father of the cell phone as he was the first person who, during April 1973, made the very first cell phone call. This first cell phone call was made to his competitor at Bell Research labs, Joel Engel.

Dr Martin Cooper was not alone. He was the Vice President of Motorola and was assisted by Richard Dronsuth, Albert Mikulski, Charles Lynk, James Mikulski, John Mitchell, Roy Richardson and John Sangster. As a research team, they would be considered the true inventors of the cell phone as they were all part of the research team at Motorola. It took many years for cell phone technology to become commercial, however. Much research had to be put in place. For one thing, the first cell phone weighed in at two pounds and was very expensive.

Today there is still a dispute as to who invented the cell phone. It is now believed that Bell Research invented cellular technology - the technology that the cell phone uses. When the FCC limited the frequency, Bell Research created the technology to reuse the telephone frequency. That being said, however, Dr Martin Cooper and his researchers created the first cell phone which used the cellular radio technology.

Technology has improved over the years. The first cell phone ran out of channels (frequencies) and its batteries did not last very long. With the advent of microprocessors from Intel, which brought improvement to the signal processing, cell phones had become smaller, used less energy and extended their battery use.  Signal technology has improved over the years from radio frequency or analogue to digital technology. The frequencies are still split between 800 MHZ, being analogue and 1900MHZ being digital. The digital frequency use on digital is less and the cell phone calls are much clearer. Cell phone technology is improving over time and in the future most of us will be on 1900MHZ or satellite technology!

Who Invented