You may have heard the name of the legend Martin "Marty" Cooper somewhere before. He's also got an alternative moniker: "Father of the cell phone." That's right, this is the guy who invented the mobile phone, paving the way for everything that cellular technology has made possible today, things which we often take for granted in our everyday lives.
Marty Cooper has opened up in a series of interviews following the launch of his book Cutting the Cord: The Cell Phone Has Transformed Humanity,which was released earlier this year. In one of those interviews given to CBS Sunday Morning, the American engineer and inventor revealed how he made the first public cell phone call ever.
That revolutionary day was April 3, 1973. Martin had just finished perfecting the first wireless cell phone ever created, and he was ready to show his invention to the world.
"There's nothing more worthless than having two people sitting there talking to each other, when you're trying to talk about the freedom that you get from having a cell phone," Marty said with a laugh, recalling his first meeting with a reporter to show his technology.
"[We] met this guy on Sixth Avenue in New York, in front of the Hilton," recalls Marty. "And then I had to make a phone call to demonstrate it." It didn't take him long to figure out whom he should call for the demonstration.
At that time, telephone services in North America were dominated by one mother company, which was the Bell System (or "Ma Bell," as it was often called). Ma Bell, which had been attracting antitrust allegations for decades, held a tight monopoly and controlled all telecommunication services in the continent for 100 years (1877–1983), crippling both the evolution of phone technology and the choices people had in products.
While Martin Cooper was working on inventing the first cell phone, the Bell System was struggling to create a working car telephone system. They were having a rough time of it because not only was an automobile-fitted telephone extremely expensive to produce, but it was also originally limited to three frequencies (at first).
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When it came time for Martin Cooper to make that first legendary phone call, he knew exactly whom he was going to call. "I know it doesn't sound reasonable, but it was serendipitous," continues Cooper, "that I thought, [I'm] going to call my counterpart in the Bell System."
"I took out my paper phonebook—to give you an idea of how we used to do it—and I looked up the number of Joel Lengel, who ran the Bell System car telephone program."
"This is your archrival!" exclaims the CBS interviewer.
"Yeah, he was," chuckles Cooper. "I dialed his number, and amazingly, he answered (not his secretary). I said, 'Hi Joel, It's Marty Cooper. [..] I'm calling you on a cellphone.. but a real cell phone! A personal one... [a] handheld, portable cell phone!' [There was] silence on the other end."
Cooper goes on to say that his Bell System archrival had no recollection whatsoever of that conversation afterwards... "And I guess I don't blame him," he adds with a quiet chuckle. "He deserved it."
Talk about throwing salt in the face of your enemies! After that historical first public phone call, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which had until then regulated and supported the monopoly over telecommunications services, was impressed enough by the new technology that it opened up the mobile phone industry to competition.
And in 1983, the Ma Bell monopoly (which was owned by AT&T by then) could no longer withstand antitrust pressure and finally broke up, ending its hundred-year-reign and allowing competition in the telephone industry to thrive and multiply.
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