Martin Cooper, an American engineer who earned the nickname “Father of the Cell Phone,” says the device in our pockets has virtually limitless potential and could one day help fight some diseases.
But right now we might be a little obsessed with them.
“When I see someone crossing the street looking at their phone, I feel terrible. They’re not thinking,” the 94-year-old engineer told AFP at his office in Del Mar, California.
“But after several people get run over, they’ll understand,” he joked.
Cooper has an Apple Watch and the latest iPhone, on which he intuitively jumps from his email to his photos to YouTube to controlling his hearing aid.
It renews the device every time the company releases a version, which it puts through a thorough examination.
But he confesses that, with millions of apps available, it can be too much.
“I’m never going to learn to use a mobile phone the way my grandchildren and great-grandchildren do,” she said.
real mobility
Cooper’s iPhone, which he uses essentially for calls, is a far removed version of the heavy block of wires and circuitry he used to make the first mobile call on April 3, 1973.
At the time, he was working for Motorola leading a team of designers and engineers in a race to produce the first truly mobile technology and avoid being left out of an emerging market.
The company had invested millions of dollars in the project in hopes of defeating the Bell System, a giant that had dominated American telecommunications since its inception in 1877.
Bell engineers had floated the idea of a cellular telephone system just after World War II, and by the late 1960s had succeeded in putting telephones in vehicles, partly because of the huge battery they required to operate.
But for Cooper, this wasn’t real mobility.
In late 1972, he decided that he wanted a device that people could use anywhere.
Using Motorola’s resources, he assembled experts in semiconductors, transistors, filters, and antennas, who worked non-stop for three months.
In late March, the team unveiled the DynaTAC (acronym for Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) model.
“This phone weighed more than a kilo and had a battery for 25 minutes of conversation,” he said.
“The latter was not a problem. The phone was so heavy that you couldn’t hold it for more than 25 minutes.”
That first call didn’t have to be long. It was enough that it was successful.
And what better recipient than the rival?
“I was on Sixth Avenue [en Nueva York] and it occurred to me to call my competitor at the Bell System, Dr. Joel Engel.”
“And I said, ‘Joel, this is Martin Cooper. I’m calling on a handheld cellphone. But a real, personal, portable, handheld cellphone.'”
“There was silence on the other end of the line. I think he was grinding his teeth.”
“Beat diseases”
Those early cell phones weren’t cheap, valued at $5,000, but they brought benefits to their early adopters, who Cooper said included people in the real estate business.
“It turns out that people who work in real estate, show houses or take new clients on the phone … Now they could do both at the same time, which doubled their productivity.”
“The cell phone has become an extension of the person, it can do so many things,” Cooper said.
“And we are just at the beginning. We are just beginning to understand what it can do. In the future, we hope that the cell phone will revolutionize education. It will revolutionize the medical field.”
“I know it sounds exaggerated, but in one or two generations, we are going to beat diseases.”
Just as your watch monitors your heart rate while you swim, and your phone controls your hearing aids, cell phones will one day be connected to a series of body sensors that will detect diseases before they develop.
Between that tome of fifty years ago and the current devices, the distance is gigantic. Cooper always knew, however, that the device he and his team created would change the world.
“We knew that one day everyone would have cell phones. We’re almost there. There are more mobile subscriptions in the world than there are people. So that part of our dream came true.”
New technologies often bring challenges.
“When television came along, people were mesmerized. But somehow (…) we came to understand that there is a quality associated with watching television.”
We’re in the phase of staring at our phones mindlessly, but it won’t last, Cooper says.
“Each generation is smarter than the last. They will learn to use the cell phone more effectively. Sooner or later humans will figure it out.”