by Wendy R.

Created on: March 08, 2010   Last Updated: March 10, 2010

Martin Cooper was the lead engineer responsible for the creation of the hand held mobile phone. Born in Chicago in 1928, Dr.Cooper led Motorola, using his skills as an electrical engineer to produce the first mobile phone.

After serving in the war in Korea, Cooper worked for Western Electric and than Motorola. While working for Motorola, he pursued his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and worked on crystallization found in watches. By the 1970’s Martin Cooper had been put in charge of the phone division, as it related to cars.

His work on the “car phone” however, was not just envisioned for the automobile. Working with head engineer John Mitchell, Cooper took just ninety days to produce the first prototype mobile phone, a phone small enough to carry around.  This original model, created by Cooper in 1973, was also the first “cellular” phone to be spoken through. His first call was to a rival of his, Joel Engel, a researcher at Bell Labs.  This laboratory, a subsidiary of AT&T had actually worked on the concept of a mobile phone since the 1940’s only to be outdone by Cooper and Motorola.

This phone, known as the Motorola DynaTac handset was very small, weighing about 2 pounds, and was had the capability of having about thirty-five minutes of talking time.  Ten years and four changes later, the phone was lighter and cost about four thousand dollars. Cooper left Motorola shortly thereafter before these phones started to sell to the public.

In the early 1990’s, Cooper joined a researcher by the name of Richard Roy at Stanford University and the two of them founded ArrayComm.  Their company specialized in more efficient cellular communication.  A decade or so later, Cooper co-founded Jitterbug Wireless, a company created shortly after Verizon Wireless.  This company specializes on providing cellular communication that is particularly helpful to elderly consumers.

Cooper’s company ArrayComm is also responsible for the production of antenna technology which is used to make the internet more people friendly by allowing for high speed internet for a sensible price.

Cooper has worked to make broadband internet more reachable to people so that communication can be available just about anywhere. He has felt that since 2003 his broadband internet availability has taken a big step towards allowing communication for people who have internet access a feasible, inexpensive, practical way of communicating.

Sources: Wikipedia

http://cellular.co.za/cellphone_inventor.htm

Learn more about this author, Wendy R..
Click here to send this author comments or questions.