Happy Friday!
I hope you had a great week! It is a busy week for holidays: Passover, Good Friday and Easter which include gatherings and lots of food! If you are not busy cooking, cleaning and eating, you can celebrate the festivities of National Frog Jumping Day today, made famous by Mark Twain's story about a pet frog named Dan'l Webster and a contest between two men betting on whose frog jumps higher. The first frog jumping contest was held in Calaveras County, California and the international counterpart of the frog party is on February 19.
Today marks a day in telephone history when the first mobile phone call was made in 1973. Before cell phones, phone communication was stationary. Phone booths were ubiquitous on the streets and other public places, often in use or out of order, and required carrying coins. Car phones existed but they were large and tied to a vehicle. The idea of a personal phone was like science fiction.
Dr. Martin Cooper, an electrical engineer, headed Motorola's communications system division. He conceived of the first portable cellular phone, stating that it should be a "personal telephone – something that would represent an individual so you could assign a number, not to a place, not to a desk, not to a home, but to a person." After Motorola committed financial resources, he and his team designed and assembled a product in less than 3 months. The DynaTAC phone was 10 inches long and was called "the brick" or "the shoe" phone (it was shaped like a narrow boot although the name may have been influenced somewhat by the TV character Maxwell Smart). Most of that space was taken up by the battery which weighed more than 4-5 times that of a modern cell home. It had only 30 minutes of talk time, took 10 hours to charge and cost $4000 (equivalent to about $30,000 today). Per Cooper, "The battery lifetime wasn't really a problem because you couldn't hold that phone up for that long!"
On April 3, 1973, Cooper and manager and mentor John Francis Mitchell took to the streets of Manhattan to show people two working phones, then walked to a scheduled press conference at the New York City Hilton. Cooper stood outside the Hiton on Sixth Avenue and called his chief competitor, Joel S. Engel at AT&T (Bell Labs) as reporters and onlookers watched. Fortunately, Engel was in the office. When he answered, Cooper said, "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone."
Public reaction to the DynaTAC was mixed – because of its size, weight and expense, it was deemed impractical but the major telephone companies jumped on it. Cellular networks needed to be created and the technology needed to be improved to make the devices practical and affordable.
The mobile phone industry expanded in the 1980s and 1990s, entering pop culture, developing standardized networks, allowing international roaming and compatibility. Jobs, investments and productivity boomed. Then came smartphones and apps. Mobile phones replaced land lines in many countries and households, making phone access widely available. Cooper's invention announced a new way of life and even his rival, Joel Engel, admitted that the famous phone call was "...a historic moment not just for us, but for humanity".
Cooper went on to develop other communications technologies and components, later forming his own company. As we know, cell phones have changed our lives and are almost indispensable. Ironically the phone component of the smartphone is probably its least used feature. While cell phones brought us closer together, they also introduced new stresses, such as constant availability, privacy concerns, digital fatigue and isolation. Text messages, while convenient and effective for many purposes, have supplanted actual conversations. Excessive use of smartphones is associated with physical discomfort, loneliness, anxiety and depression. They are used to "pass the time" when waiting for something or even while eating. Smartphone addiction involves the reward circuits in the brain with release of dopamine that acts on the amygdala (emotional processing) and the pre-frontal cortex (decision making, impulse control). They also lead to lack of sleep owing to their lighted screens.
The earlier developers of cell phones correctly raised concerns about their effects on social interaction. I don't think they could imagine that at the shoe phone was going to evolve in a handheld computer that is so integrated into our daily lives. Cheers to Martin Cooper and his famous call! Have a good weekend and, as AT&T use to say – reach out and touch someone (with your voice, on the phone).
Deb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZDlaZCpKYw