Marty Cooper, who made the first mobile phone call in 1973, says modern devices are « suboptimal ».
On 3 April 1973, Marty Cooper stood on a corner of Sixth Avenue in New York and took a phone book from his pocket.
He then punched a number into a large, cream-coloured device and put it to his ear while passers-by stared at him.
Mr Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, rang his counterpart at rival firm Bell Laboratories, to triumphantly tell him he was calling from « a personal, handheld, portable cell phone ».
He recalls there being silence on the end of the line.
« I think he was gritting his teeth, » says the 94-year-old, laughing.
Bell Laboratories had been focusing on developing a car-based phone instead, he says. « Could you believe that? So we had been trapped in our homes and offices by this copper wire for over 100 years – and now they were going to trap us in our cars! »
Needless to say, Mr Cooper and Motorola did not agree this was the way forward – and history has proved them right.
The basics of how that first call worked haven’t changed much. The phone converts your voice into an electric signal, which modulates a radio wave.
