Martin Cooper, the "father of the mobile phone". An American inventor who entered history through the door of "Motorola"

Martin Cooper, an American engineer, inventor and businessman of Ukrainian descent born in 1928, led the invention of the world's first mobile phone, and made the first phone call in history, with the intention of embarrassing the competing company, and his invention revolutionized the field of communications.

Birth and upbringing

Martin Cooper was born on December 26, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest son of Mary and Arthur Cooper, who emigrated from Ukraine during the Chicago economic depression.

He came from a modest family that made a living selling goods at home, but gave great importance to education, something Cooper inherited from his parents and was influenced by from a young age and for the rest of his life.

Martin Cooper majored in electrical engineering science (Reuters)

Study and scientific training

Cooper began his education at Lawson Elementary School in Chicago. He then attended Crane Technical High School in the same city, where he met two teachers who became a great inspiration in life, Kenny and Corrigan who greatly supported him and worked to satisfy his great curiosity for learning and knowledge.

After that, he joined the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago to pursue his university studies, and decided to become a physicist, and almost became so, if it were not for chemistry, which he found difficult to understand and understand, so he had to change his choice, then everyone who wanted to become a physicist had to study chemistry compulsorily.

To finance his education at the institute, he joined the U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1950 and continuing his studies until he received his master's degree in 1957.

Years later, Cooper received a patent for his invention of the wireless telephone system. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate in the field of wireless communications from the same institute.

Practical and professional experience

During the fifties, Cooper joined the training camps for U.S. Army reservists who participated in the Korean War between the "North" supported by the communist Eastern camp and the "South" supported by capitalist countries, specializing in a naval destroyer that blows up railroads along the North Korean coast, and received a medal from South Korean President Singh Man-ri for his services.

Cooper then entered submarine school in New London, Connecticut, graduating with second place, and as a reward was written on the USS, one of the newest submarines at the time.

Over time, Cooper began to consider looking for work that would allow him to settle in the United States. So, he left the Navy after 3.5 years of service, joining Belle System, a division of the giant AT&T that was taking over the country's telecommunications market.

AT&T's Bell Laboratories conceived the concept of the cellular telephone in 1946 and had a monopoly on wireless communications.

Over time, Cooper became uncomfortable at work due to the strict procedures put in place by the organization, especially in terms of timing and method of work, so he left and joined Teletype Corporation, a subsidiary of Western Electric.

Cooper and his team created a prototype cell phone in just 90 days (Reuters)

Entering history through Motorola's door

While working at Teletip Corporation, Cooper received an offer from Motorola in Schaumburg, Illinois, and joined in 1954.

At the time, Motorola was selling radio-related products and parts, and it was a small company compared to AT&T but it was more flexible, as Cooper found the right environment to work and implement his ideas and projects, unlike AT&T's strict system in which he often stayed working on his projects even after his hours.

This system allowed Cooper to continue working and studying at night in preparation for a master's degree, in a way that did not hinder his work. Within two years, he had obtained his first patent for an selective signaling device and received his master's degree in 1957.

The following year, Cooper patented the first automatic wireless phone operating in rural areas of the United States. He also obtained a patent for the introduction of a traffic light system.

In addition, Cooper helped Motorola fix the defects of the crystal of its radio, which led the company to mass-produce the first quartz crystals.

In December 1971, AT&T proposed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a government body that regulates interstate and international communications, to provide "terrestrial mobile phone service" and required 30 MHz of spectrum. Since each city has only 30 channels, this means monopolizing and controlling the telecommunications market and ending Motorola's existence.

But Cooper found AT&T's vision of cell phones illogical: it was limited to "car phones" that plugged into the dashboard, and required a large charging process, consuming the car's battery. Moreover, the estimated cost was as high as $3,5 to $<>,<>.

AT&T claimed to be the only company in the world with the technical capacity and financial resources to do so, but Cooper believed Motorola had the ability to create such a technology, and that it would be more practical.

But that wasn't enough, given that AT&T was outperforming Motorola in terms of material and human capabilities.

Even if Motorola could offer the same product, AT&T could easily outpace its competitor at cheaper prices. So, Cooper claimed that they could create something better, that could easily beat the competing company. He said they could set up a wireless mobile phone.

Cooper almost became a physicist had he not failed in chemistry, so he had to change his studies and specialize in electrical engineering (Reuters)

The first cell phone in history

Motorola's first step was to prevent the FCC from approving AT&T's proposal, so its legal team began working on a proposal for the FCC to allow private companies to operate network communications over radio frequencies.

Motorola also needed to convince the government agency that the mobile idea was indeed feasible from a practical standpoint, despite AT&T's claims that car phones are the future of communications.

In November 1972, Cooper and his team sought to turn their idea into an invention. They succeeded in creating a prototype of the cell phone in just 90 days, and he immediately organized an in-house competition to create a suitable design for the new phone, selecting five of them and setting a deadline of December of the same year for the participants to complete the design and setting them two months.

The initial design was only a few centimeters long, but when engineers began to assemble its parts, the length of the phone increased 3 times.

The prototype was called "Motorola DynaTAC" and cost the company a lot of money, and the weight of the phone was approximately one kilogram, and its length was approximately 25 centimeters by 12 centimeters deep and about 5 centimeters wide, but after subsequent attempts it was reduced in size by about half.

This mobile phone could be used for about half an hour after each charge. It took about 10 hours to recharge.

On April 3, 1973, he organized a press conference in New York to unveil the new invention, and on his way to the conference, he had the idea of embarrassing his commercial rival, AT&T, to prove that one of the world's largest wireless communications companies had been defeated by a small company.

While walking down a street near Manhattan Hilton, Cooper took the phone and called AT&T's Bell System lab number, and when he put the phone to his ear, his heartbeat increased, fearing that the experiment would fail despite testing the device with his team several times.

Several journalists were among the few with him, meaning the margin of error or failure of the attempt was not allowed, and within moments Cooper heard the phone ring on the other end where Bill Labs manager Joel Engel was located, who answered the line: Hello, Cooper replied, "Hey, Joel, this is me Marty Cooper, I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real cell phone."

Cooper allowed reporters who attended the press conference to use and try the phone, as well as the opportunity to call and make calls to whomever they wanted.

The next day, the phrase "Motorola offers a wireless cell phone" was making headlines in the US press, and Cooper was named "the first inventor of the cellular phone system." In July 1973, Motorola Dina Tak appeared on the cover of Popular Science magazine.

In 1958, Cooper patented the first automatic cordless telephone operating in rural U.S. (Reuters)

Leaving Motorola

After Motorola spent nearly $100 million to develop it, its Motorola Dina Tuck received approval from the Federal Communications Commission on September 21, 1983, for sale to the public.

To prove that the phone worked for dealers in retail stores, Motorola had to send a team with the phone consisting of Cooper himself accompanied by an engineer, where Cooper works to provide the phone and the engineer to maintain it if necessary because it contains more than a thousand pieces.

Cooper realized the need for a proper billing system, so he decided to leave Motorola and start his own company with his wife Arlene in Southern California to provide billing systems for cellular phone users, which he called Cellular Business Systems.

In 1984, Motorola made the first publicly available cell phone, called the DYNA Tac 8000X, which can be used for 8000 minutes and costs about $30,3995.

Although the cell phone at the time was considered a revolution in the means of communication, many could not buy it, as it was rare to find a cell phone in the general public, as only the wealthy could afford it.

Cooper and a few members of his team believed that the demand for cell phones would rise due to the role they would play in communication and shortening distances, and soon people started buying them, and the demand rose so much that at one point phone queues were in the thousands, and Cooper proved right again.

In 1986, Cooper and his wife sold their company for about $23 million and founded Dina LCC and later other companies such as Subscriber Computing Inc., Cellular pay phone Inc. and SOS wireless.

A few years later, Cooper received a call from Richard Roy, a researcher at Stanford University, and he had an idea to make mobile communications more efficient using the Smart antenna pickup.

In 1992, Cooper, along with Richard Roy and Arlene, founded ArrayComm, a wireless software company.

In 1995, Cooper received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for his technological innovations in communications. He also received the Fred Link Award from Radio Club America. In the following years, Cooper received several other awards for his achievements in wireless technology.

Cooper's phone was about one kilogram and 25 centimeters long by 12 centimeters deep and 5 centimeters wide (Britannica)

Cooper's Law

In 1997, the inventor of the mobile phone formulated Cooper's Law, which states that the number of wireless signals that can be broadcast or transmitted at the same time without interfering with each other doubles approximately every 30 months.

Cooper stated that this law has been valid since 1897 when the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi first patented the wireless telegraph.

A phone in the human body

Cooper believes that wireless technology is still in its infancy despite its tremendous development since the turn of the millennium, that the potential it possesses has not yet been fully realized, and that future generations will have much more to offer in the field of cellular.

Cooper answered the most frequently asked questions about wireless technology in a newly published book, "Everybody Is Wrong," where he shares his insights, talks about how he predicts the evolution of the world of communication, and believes that one day electronic chips will be installed or implanted under human skin instead of cell phones.

Cooper predicts that within 15 to 20 years, humans will have wireless devices built into their bodies to help diagnose and treat the disease.

"Built-in wireless devices can also help solve the problem of phone power consumption," which has come a long way in the past three decades, but remains a challenge for cellular phone users, he said.

Although he believed it was humans who stood in the way of humans using their bodies to charge their phones, Cooper said many were also surprised to see him talking to a walkie-talkie for the first time on the corner of 56th Street and Lexington Street on April 3, 1973.