The History Of Mobile Phones

Welcome back my fellow learners. Today we are going to speak about the mobile phone, how it was invented and its consequent progress since then.

The first ever mobile call was made by Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at the time working for Motorola on April 3, 1973. Obviously having a quirky sense of humour, his first call was to his rival company informing quite tongue in cheek, that he was talking to them via a mobile phone. This phone however, was bigger than a house brick, weighing a whopping 1.1kg, it provided you with approximately 30 minutes of talk time, which let’s face it ladies would be absolutely no good to us, and then it took a staggering 10 hours to re-charge.

However, I am jumping the gun slightly, so let’s go back even further. The origins of the mobile phone are very interesting to say the least. It started with that famous man Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the first phone in 1876. This was designed by using the telegraph as a rough guide. Phone calls would be routed via operators, who would then in turn direct your call to the relevant person.

Ericsson being technically advanced as per normal, released the earliest cellular phone system known in Sweden as the MTA in 1956. However, due to its bulk and weight soon fizzled out, mobile phones back in the day could weigh up to 40kgs. A lighter version soon came out in 1965 and was called the MTB. 

However, it was a young engineer living in Moscow called Leonid Kupriyanovich in 1957 first developed the wearable mobile phone, this was operated with the help of a base station. The battery of this revolutionary phone lasted up to 30 hours, and weighed 3kg, however, it only worked at a distance of 30km from the base station. Later on that same year, this enterprising young man, came up with a pocket version of this same phone, and it only weighed 0.5kg.

In 1970, Ames E Joel invented the handoff technology, thus ensuring mobile phone users were not restricted within a certain distance of their base station. Ames technology allowed people to make a call while passing through different cell areas without loss of connection.

Since then technological advances have progressed by leaps and bounds. Modern phones now possess the ability to having a miniature office all stored on one phone.