Martin Cooper (inventor)

Last updated

Martin Cooper
Martin Cooper, Two Antennas, October 2010.jpg
Cooper in 2007
Born (1928-12-26) December 26, 1928 (age 96)
Other namesMarty Cooper
Education Illinois Institute of Technology (BS, MS)
Occupations
  • Inventor
  • entrepreneur
  • executive
Known forInventor of the first handheld cellular mobile phone
Title Motorola
Founder & CEO of ArrayComm
Co-founder and chairman of Dyna LLC
Spouse
(m. 1991)
Awards Marconi Prize (2013), ITU 150 Awards (2015) [1]
Website www.dynallc.com

Martin Cooper (born December 26, 1928) is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field. [2] [3]

Contents

On April 3, 1973, he placed the first public call from a handheld portable cell phone while working at Motorola, from a Manhattan sidewalk to his counterpart at competitor Bell Labs. [4] [5] Cooper reprised the first handheld cellular mobile phone (distinct from the car phone) in 1973 and led the team that re-developed it and brought it to market in 1983. [6] [7] He is considered the "father of the (handheld) cell phone". [2] [6] [8] [9]

Cooper is co-founder of numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner Arlene Harris; [10] He is co-founder and current Chairman of Dyna LLC, in Del Mar, California. Cooper also sits on committees supporting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission [11] and the United States Department of Commerce.

In 2010, Cooper was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in the creation and deployment of the cellular portable hand-held telephone.

Education

Cooper was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. [12] [13] [14] He graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1950 and served as a submarine officer during the Korean War. [2]

In 1957, he earned his master's degree from IIT in electrical engineering and in 2004 received an honorary doctorate degree from IIT. He serves on the university's board of trustees.

Career

Motorola

Cooper left his first job at Teletype Corporation in Chicago in 1954 and joined Motorola, Inc. (Schaumburg, Illinois) as a senior development engineer in the mobile equipment group. He developed products including the first cellular-like portable handheld police radio system, produced for the Chicago police department in 1967. [15] [16]

By the early 1970s, Cooper headed Motorola's communications systems division. [4] Here he conceived of the first portable cellular phone in 1973 and led the 10-year process of bringing it to market. [8] Car phones had been in limited use in large U.S. cities since the 1930s but Cooper championed cellular telephony for more general personal, portable communications. [17] He believed the cellular phone 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." [4]

Top management at Motorola supported Cooper's mobile phone concept, investing $100 million between 1973 and 1993 before any revenues were realized. [18] Cooper assembled a team that designed and assembled a product in less than 90 days. That original handset, called the DynaTAC 8000x (DYNamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) weighed 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg), measured 10 inches (25 cm) long and was dubbed "the brick" or "the shoe" phone. [19] A very substantial part of the DynaTAC was the battery, which weighed four to five times more than a modern cell phone. [7] The phone had only 30 minutes of talk time before requiring a 10-hour recharge but according to Cooper, "The battery lifetime wasn't really a problem because you couldn't hold that phone up for that long!" By 1983 and after four iterations, the handset was reduced to half its original weight.

Cooper is the lead inventor named on "radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973, with the U.S. Patent Office and later issued as U.S. Patent 3,906,166. [20] John Francis Mitchell, Motorola's Chief of Portable Communication Products (and Cooper's Manager and Mentor) and the engineers who worked for Cooper and Mitchell are also named on the patent.

On April 3, 1973, Cooper and Mitchell demonstrated two working phones to the media and to passers-by prior to walking into a scheduled press conference at the New York City Hilton in midtown Manhattan. Standing on Sixth avenue near the Hilton, Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call in public from the prototype DynaTAC. The call connected him to a base station Motorola had installed on the roof of the Burlington House (now the AllianceBernstein Building) and into the AT&T land-line telephone system. [15] Reporters and onlookers watched as Cooper dialed the number of his chief competitor Dr. Joel S. Engel at AT&T. [21] "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone." [22] That public demonstration landed the DynaTAC on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science Magazine. [15] As Cooper recalls from the experience: "I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter – probably one of the most dangerous things I have ever done in my life."

Cooper holding a DynaTAC cellphone in 2007 2007Computex e21Forum-MartinCooper.jpg
Cooper holding a DynaTAC cellphone in 2007

That first cell phone began a fundamental technology and communications market shift to making phone calls to a person instead of to a place. [6] [19] Bell Labs had introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947, but their first systems were limited to car phones which required roughly 30 pounds (12 kg) of equipment in the trunk. [21] Motorola gained Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for cellular licenses to be assigned to competing entities and prevented an AT&T monopoly on cellular service. [15]

Cooper worked at Motorola for 29 years; building and managing both its paging and cellular businesses. He also led the creation of trunked mobile radio, quartz crystal oscillators, liquid crystal displays, piezo-electric components, Motorola A.M. stereo technology and various mobile and portable two-way radio product lines.

Cooper rose to Vice-President and Corporate Director of Research and Development at Motorola. [2] In addition to his work on the mobile cellular phone, he was instrumental in expanding the technology of pagers from use within a single building to use across multiple cities. [8] Cooper also worked with inventor Clifford L. Rose to fix a flaw in quartz crystals used in Motorola's radios which encouraged the company to mass-produce the first crystals used in wrist watches. [8]

Cellular Business Systems

Dyna LLC

Martin Cooper and Arlene Harris Martin Cooper and Arlene Harris.jpg
Martin Cooper and Arlene Harris

Cooper and his wife Arlene Harris founded Dyna LLC in 1986 as a home base for their developmental and support activities for the new companies, Subscriber Computing Inc., Cellular Pay Phone, Inc. (CPPI), SOS Wireless Communications and Accessible Wireless; the later two of which together created the underpinning for the creation of GreatCall, were all launched from Dyna LLC.

From his Dyna headquarters Cooper continues to write and lecture about wireless communications, technological innovation, the Internet and R&D management. He serves on industry, civic and national governmental groups including the U.S. Department of Commerce Spectrum Advisory Committee that advises the Secretary of Commerce of the United States on spectrum policy and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Technological Advisory Council.

GreatCall, Inc

In 1986 Cooper co-founded Cellular Payphone Inc. (CPPI), the parent company of GreatCall, Inc., Innovator of the Jitterbug cell phone (in partnership with Samsung). [23] GreatCall is the first complete end-to-end value-added service provider in the cellular industry to focus on simplicity with its primary emphasis on senior citizens.

Arraycomm

In 1992 Cooper co-founded Arraycomm a developer of software for mobile antenna technologies. Under his leadership, the Company grew from a seed-funded startup in San Jose, California, into the world leader in smart antenna technology with 400 patents issued or pending, worldwide. [24]

Energous.com

Cooper joined the board of directors from 2015 to 2019.

Cooper's law

Cooper found that the ability to transmit different radio communications simultaneously and in the same place has grown at the same pace since Guglielmo Marconi's first transmissions in 1895. This led Cooper to formulate the Law of Spectral Efficiency, otherwise known as Cooper's Law. The law states that the maximum number of voice conversations or equivalent data transactions that can be conducted in all of the useful radio spectrum over a given area doubles every 30 months. [8] [24]

Publications

Latest publications

"The Myth of Spectrum Scarcity" Position Paper, March 2010.

"Mobile WiMax – Fourth-Generation Wireless," Bechtel Communications Technical Journal, September 2007.

"The Need for Simplicity," in the anthology "Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change," published by Stanford University in 2007.

"Personal Communications in 2025" for Eta Kappa Nu Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society, Autumn 2005.

"Antennas Get Smart" in Scientific American, July 2003.

"Everyone is Wrong" in Technology Review, June 2001. [25]

Awards and affiliations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced Mobile Phone System</span> Analog mobile phone system standard

Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, and was deployed in many other countries too, including Israel in 1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February 18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in India by October 2004, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola</span> American telecommunications company (1928–2011)

Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin. The company changed its name to Motorola in 1947. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was split into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions, on January 4, 2011. The reorganization was structured with Motorola Solutions legally succeeding Motorola, Inc., and Motorola Mobility being spun off.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless</span> Transfer of information or power that does not require the use of physical wires

Wireless communication is the transfer of information (telecommunication) between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most common wireless technologies use radio waves. With radio waves, intended distances can be short, such as a few meters for Bluetooth, or as far as millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications. It encompasses various types of fixed, mobile, and portable applications, including two-way radios, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wireless networking. Other examples of applications of radio wireless technology include GPS units, garage door openers, wireless computer mouse, keyboards and headsets, headphones, radio receivers, satellite television, broadcast television and cordless telephones. Somewhat less common methods of achieving wireless communications involve other electromagnetic phenomena, such as light and magnetic or electric fields, or the use of sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walkie-talkie</span> Hand-held portable two-way communications device

A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver, HT, or handheld radio, is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, Henryk Magnuski and engineering teams at Motorola. First used for infantry, similar designs were created for field artillery and tank units, and after the war, walkie-talkies spread to public safety and eventually commercial and jobsite work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Car phone</span> Telephone intended to be used in a car


A car phone is a mobile radio telephone specifically designed for and fitted into an automobile. This service originated with the Bell System and was first used in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 17, 1946.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1G</span> First generation of wireless cellular technology

1G refers to the first generation of mobile telecommunications standards, introduced in the 1980s. This generation was characterized by the use of analog audio transmissions, a major distinction from the subsequent 2G networks, which were fully digital. The term "1G" itself was not used at the time, but has since been retroactively applied to describe the early era of cellular networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of mobile phones</span> Mobile communication devices

The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola DynaTAC</span> 1980s cellphone series

The DynaTAC is a series of cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola from 1983 to 1994. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X received approval from the U.S. FCC on September 21, 1983. A full charge took roughly 10 hours, and it offered 30 minutes of talk time. It also offered an LED display for dialing or recall of one of 30 phone numbers. It was priced at US$3,995 in 1984, its commercial release year, equivalent to $11,716 in 2023. DynaTAC was an abbreviation of "Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola International 3200</span> First digital hand-held mobile telephone

The Motorola International 3200 was the first digital hand-held mobile telephone introduced in 1992, along with the more compact 5200, 5080, 7200 and 7500 "flip phones" introduced in 1994. It was preceded by the International 1000 and 2000 GSM phones, quite big, and although being the first GSM portable phones, they were not GSM certified, therefore couldn't be officially connected to the network.

A mobile phone operator, wireless provider, or carrier is a mobile telecommunications company that provides wireless Internet GSM services for mobile device users. The operator gives a SIM card to the customer who inserts it into the mobile device to gain access to the service.

The history of communication technologies have evolved in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems, and by extension, systems of power. Communication can range from very subtle processes of exchange to full conversations and mass communication. The history of communication itself can be traced back since the origin of speech circa 100,000 BCE. The use of technology in communication may be considered since the first use of symbols about 30,000 years BCE. Among the symbols used, there are cave paintings, petroglyphs, pictograms and ideograms. Writing was a major innovation, as well as printing technology and, more recently, telecommunications and the Internet.

Douglas H. Ring was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone. The history of cellular phone technology began on December 11, 1947 with an internal memo written by Douglas H. Ring in which he proposed development of a cellular telephone system by AT&T.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motorola bag phone</span> Colloquial name for a line of Motorola cellphones

The Motorola bag phone is the colloquial name for a line of personal transportable cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola, inc. from 1988 to 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone</span> Portable device to make telephone calls using a radio link

A mobile phone, or cell phone, is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones. This radio frequency link connects to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, providing access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephony relies on a cellular network architecture, which is why mobile phones are often referred to as 'cell phones' in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile interaction</span>

Mobile interaction is the study of interaction between mobile users and computers. Mobile interaction is an aspect of human–computer interaction that emerged when computers became small enough to enable mobile usage, around the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard H. Frenkiel</span> American engineer

Richard H. Frenkiel is an American engineer, known for his significant role in the early development of cellular telephone networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arlene Harris (inventor)</span> American inventor

Arlene Joy Harris is an entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and policy advocate in the telecommunications industry. She is the president and co-founder of Dyna LLC, an incubator for start-up and early-stage organizations historically in the wireless technology field. Harris is widely recognized as a pioneer in mobile and wireless enterprise and an innovator of consumer products and services. In May 2007, she became the first female inductee of the Wireless Hall of Fame, and was named to the Consumer Technology Hall of Fame in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Francis Mitchell</span> American electronics engineer

John Francis Mitchell was an American electronics engineer and president and chief operating officer of Motorola.

Philip Thomas Porter was an electrical engineer and one of the guiding pioneers of the invention and development of early cellular telephone networks.

Theodore (Ted) Scott Rappaport is an American electrical engineer and the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and founding director of NYU WIRELESS.

References

  1. ITU 150 Awards
  2. 1 2 3 4 Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2008. encyclopedia.com
  3. Companies Try to Create Room on Radio Spectrum, The New York Times , July 6, 2012
  4. 1 2 3 38 years ago he made the first cell phone call, CNN. April 3, 2011
  5. 50 years ago, Martin Cooper made the first cellphone call
  6. 1 2 3 A Chat With the Man Behind the Mobiles, BBC, April 21, 2003
  7. 1 2 Meet Marty Cooper, the Inventor of the Mobile Phone, BBC, April 23, 2010
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Father of the Cell Phone, Economist, June 4, 2009
  9. The Cell Phone: Marty Coop's Big Idea, CBS News 60 Minutes, June 11, 2010
  10. Wireless Hall of Fame – Arlene Harris, RCR Wireless, May 26, 2007
  11. Carriers Warn of Crisis in Mobile Spectrum, The New York Times , April 17, 2012
  12. "Jews of the Week: Martin Cooper and Joel Engel | Jew of the Week". December 14, 2011.
  13. "April 3: The First Cell Phone Call". Jewish Currents. Archived from the original on December 10, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
  14. "Jewish-American Hall of Fame – Nominate Somebody". amuseum.org.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Oehmke, Ted (January 6, 2000) Cell Phone Ruin the Opera? Meet the Culprit, The New York Times
  16. Reed, Brad (May 9, 2011) Meet the guy who made the first cellphone call 40 years ago today, Network World.
  17. Best Inventions of 2007, Time.
  18. Inventor of the Cell Phone Says No to AT&T-Mobile, Yes to Apps, and More, PC Magazine, April 15, 2011
  19. 1 2 Inventor of Cell Phone: We Knew Someday Everybody Would Have One, CNN, July 9, 2010
  20. Cooper, Martin et al. "All Signaling" U.S. patent 3,906,166 , Issued September 1, 1975
  21. 1 2 April 3, 1973: Motorola Calls AT&T...by Cell, Wired, April 3, 2008
  22. Twitter, Telegram and Email: Famous First Lines, BBC News, March 21, 2011
  23. Cooper's Calling, ITP Net, April 21, 2010
  24. 1 2 Antennas Get Smart, Scientific American, June 9, 2003
  25. Review, Technology. "Everyone Is Wrong". MIT Technology Review.
  26. "They're Accomplished, They're Famous, and They're MENSANS". Mensa Bulletin (476). American Mensa: 25. July 2004. ISSN   0025-9543.
  27. "2002 Honoree - for cellphone". American Computer and Robotics Museum. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
  28. "The fathers of the mobile phone and email, Prince of Asturias Award Laureates for Technical and Scientific Research" (Press release). Fundación Príncipe de Asturias. June 17, 2009. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2009.
  29. "Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients". Radio Club of America. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
  30. "Webby Lifetime Achievement - Martin Cooper". Webby Awards. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
  31. "Washington Award Recipients". The Washington Award. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
  32. "Martin Cooper". NAE Website. June 30, 2023. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
  33. "Martin Cooper – Marconi Society". October 26, 2013.
  34. "Martin Cooper - Marconi Award 2013".[ permanent dead link ]
  35. Academische Openingszitting 2013–2014 Archived May 24, 2018, at the Wayback Machine . uhasselt.be. September 27, 2013
  36. The White House (January 3, 2025). "President Biden Honors Nation's Leading Scientists, Technologists, and Innovators". The White House. Retrieved January 4, 2025.

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