Handheld cell phone

The modern handheld cell phone era began in 1973 when Motorola invented the first cellular portable telephone to be commercialised, known as Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is considered to be the inventor of this mobile phone for use in a non-vehicle setting. There was a long race between Motorola and Bell Labs to produce the first such portable mobile phone. Cooper is the first inventor named on "Radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973 with the US Patent Office and later issued as US Patent 3,906,166. Other named contributors on the patent included Cooper's boss, John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication products, who successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use outside the home, office or automobile and he participated in the design of the cellular phone. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy hand-held mobile phone, Cooper made the first cellular phone call on April 3, 1973 to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.




Further research occurred during the 1970s on other crucial aspects of the mobile phone service. In 1973 a cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum, In 1977 a cellular telephone data signaling system was described by Hachenburg et al. In 1979 a U.S. Patent 4,152,647, was issued May 1, 1979 to Charles A. Gladden and Martin H. Parelman, both of Las Vegas, Nevada for an emergency cellular system for rapid deployment in areas where there was no cellular service, and assigned by them to the United States Government.