30 Years of Cell Phone Calls 134
freitasm writes "30 years ago, 3 April 1973, Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist. The NY Times has an article about the "crime scene". Dr Cooper now works as CEO of Arraycom." There's also a story on siliconvalley.com.
2003? (Score:2, Funny)
30 years ago was 2003? Jesus, somebody must have signed me up for a subscription, because I'm getting stories from the distant future!
Re:2003? (Score:2)
sigh (Score:5, Funny)
gloating (Score:2, Funny)
Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call, to a rival scientist
Do you think his first words were "ha ha! beat you!"?
Re:gloating (Score:2)
Don't you realize that this scenery implies that the rival scientist had to get the cellphone first, Dr Martin Cooper must have been second to be able to make the first call...
Re:gloating (Score:1)
Re:gloating (Score:1)
Sorry. That joke only works for Alexander Graham Bell.
First call? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First call? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:First call? (Score:1)
Oh my god, look at the size of that thing! (Score:1, Funny)
Yes, I realise it was an impressive feat at the time, but considering my phone is less than a tenth of the weight of that, it seems impossibly heavy.
You bet! (Score:1)
But, of course, they only made one of those....
Nope, just perspective (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh my god, look at the size of that thing! (Score:2)
We need a few other firsts (Score:2, Insightful)
First person to make a phoner call during a film.
First person to say "I'm on the train loudly for the benefit of everyone else to hear"
First person top get their credit card details stolen because they didn't realise that anyone sitting nearby can hear everything they say.
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:2)
Try "a funeral" too: During the funeral of one of the best-known lawyers in Norway, there were TEN mobile-phone calls made to IDIOTS who didn't turn their off.
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:2)
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:2)
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:1)
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:1)
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:1)
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:2)
Seriously, if it's been 30 years, I would think some better studies could have come out with decisive evidence one way or the other on the cancer issue. The "no, don't cause cancer" I have read are not as convincing as I would like, and the "yes, do have an effect" articles are rather tenuous. Well, it's biology so I know it will take a while and the answer will be complex.
Re:We need a few other firsts (Score:1)
Okay, I promise to get my quote marks in the right place next time.
They don't make 'em like they used to (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They don't make 'em like they used to (Score:2)
Re:They don't make 'em like they used to (Score:1)
Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:4, Funny)
Dyna-Tac (1973)
Features: Talk, listen, dial
Really, when it comes down to it, do you need anything else? Sure, text messaging is a bonus and games are fun(ish) when you're stuck in a traffic jam but you only need to be able to dial, talk and listen to ruin someone's cinema experience.
Re:Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:1)
I've got a Motorola T720 and to tell me it has a low battery, it lights up its two screens and beeps. Every few minutes. There is something very wrong with that I'm sure.
Re:Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:1)
It's a nice plain phone. It sits in my pocket, and has for oh, 4 or 5 years now. It rings when it's supposed to, and gets my calls out. It could use a new antenna. Other than that, I have NO problems with it
Sometimes old is good
Re:Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:1)
My Ericsson A2618s has such a bad user interface, I've thought of writing a paper pointing out its flaws from the perspective of HCI.
One of its amazing features is that the longer a text message gets, the longer it takes for it to respond to letter selection. (No predictive text, thank God.) I've easily managed to get 10 to 12 characters ahead of it. Presumable every time it adds a character to a string, it copies the whole string to a buffer one character longer and then appends the new char...
That's
Re:Cell Phones Then and Now (Score:1)
first phone conversation (Score:2, Funny)
And the first reply was (Score:2, Funny)
With apologies to Private Eye.
I never realized (Score:2)
With the arrival of Libertel (now Vodafone) in 1995 I took my first subsscription. I remember getting the phone for donating a small amount (about $10) to the red cross.
The first few phones were big, heavy and had very little battery-life compared to modern cellphones
Wow this sure bring
30 years of _american_ phone calls... (Score:5, Informative)
In early 1980s first multinational cell phone network (NMT) was already in use in Scandinavia.
More information about telecommunication history can be found here [info.uta.fi].
An American failure..... (Score:5, Informative)
NMT was more or less a copy of AMPS which was developed by Motorola and AT&T.
It's in the paper, so you know that's a fact.
In 1990 - two years before GSM was launched - the United States had a single country-wide cellular radio system (AMPS) and Europe had a hodgepodge of incombatible standards (NMT, TACS, etc.) In 1990 an American could drive between New York and Washington DC and have AMPS coverage the whole way... while a European could not drive from Antwerp to Aachen (about 1/3 the distance) without having to use a different phone.
America invented cellular, but our pro-competitive government thought it would be a good idea to let a variety of 2G standards (DAMPS, CDMA, Nextel) to compete against each other in the market, and killed it. Thank you Ronald Reagan.
While competition was creating a patchwork quilt of cellular standards in the US, the Europeans developed GSM and agreed to use the SAME standard in all the European countries.
Today, I can take use my GSM phone in 100 countries (even the US), but I can't use a CDMA phone in all 50 states.
Thus did "Old Europe" kick the shit out of the New World.
i.e., We did it to ourselves.
Re:An American failure..... (Score:2)
Standards are good though. Doesn't that mean we should have a lot of them?
Re:An American failure..... (Score:2)
Re:An American failure..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An American failure..... (Score:1)
It's a bit difficult to make a case that the market is dead given that roughly half the population owns cell phones.
And it was the FCC, not Reagan, who (correctly, IMO) decided that it should not impose a technology on the market but that it could and should let market forces determine which technol
Re:An American failure..... (Score:1)
Hey you- don't you dare get in the way of Democratic Reagan-bashing! How are they ever going to get the history books falsified if you're going to keep correcting them!
Re:30 years of _american_ phone calls... (Score:2)
When did the first handhelds arrive in NMT?
Re:30 years of _cellular_ phone calls... (Score:2)
A similar car phone network, but smaller than ARP, was in place in Chicago during the 1930s. Al Capone used a car phone -- but not a CELLULAR phone.
This article is not about car phones, it's about CELLULAR phones.
BIG difference. Non-cellular car phones are, for all intents and purposes, more powerful versions of the wireless phone you have in your house hooked to a P
The First Call (Score:3, Funny)
ring...ring...
Hello?
Hear this byotch? It's the sound of me 0wnz0ring you!
Re:The First Call (Score:1)
Times article is OLD (Score:1)
It may well be 30 years since the first cellphone call, but it's three years since the NYT article was written . . . couldn't you find something a little more up to date?!
P
Talking while driving (Score:3, Funny)
"30 years ago, 3rd April 2003 Dr Martin Cooper placed the first cellular phone call"...
It is also apparently obvious that Dr. Cooper placed that call while driving a DeLorean.
hmm (Score:1)
GSM and SMS history (Score:1)
GSM [gsmworld.com].
SMS/MMS [europemedia.net].
Some of my tutors have seen the logic port prototypes of the first GSM phone, and that took several trollies to cart around.
Then they were able to make a portable version. Well, portable, I guess it weighed over 10 kg, and was carried in a "backpack" configuration. Like those field radioes you see in Vietnam war movies, only twice as big and heavy.
I saw a picture of one guy on a testing trip with tha
Re:GSM and SMS history (Score:1)
ooo, I have one of those (Score:1)
I should pop over to EBay and see if anyone is still buying the Nokia 8860s - I never use mine anymore since I have the 8890 now.
Moore's law on size of cellphones? (Score:2)
I would think it should - but anyhoo...
Re:Moore's law on size of cellphones? (Score:2)
The charger was about the size of a standard beige PC.
Yay progress.
Re:Moore's law on size of cellphones? (Score:2, Funny)
In Futurama, I would have thought it would actually be a cell (as opposed to a contraction of cellular.)
Memories (Score:2)
Of course I could just get a Nokia 7250 but thats not the point
Rus
Maybe first in America... (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1955 the first automatic mobile phone system was launched in Stockholm to the public.
Re:Maybe first in America... (Score:1)
as for me, my first phone was a Sony CMH 333 (Mars Bar) which I think I got in '90 or '91 - though my father had a SIMPLEX TACS Motorola car phone several years before that. I now use a Nokia 8910 - it having just displaced my old Ericsson T-28s because Ercsson don't make gorgeous phones anymore with covered keypads, whereas Nokia do...
Re:Maybe first in America... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Maybe first in America... (Score:1)
Re:Maybe first in America... (Score:1)
The facts are usually twisted to give one country the credit over another. In this case, The Swedish Telecom likely had a radio system patched into land-lines. Can you verify that it was truly a cellular system?
but... (Score:1)
That would be the hard part.....
DynaTac Security (Score:2, Funny)
No, they are about 20 years late. (Score:1, Interesting)
An recent interview with Sture is availble here (in swedish) http://www.aftonbladet.se/it/0001/03/mobil.html
1955 Stockholm, Sweden has a working cell phone system.
More on the topic can be found here (in english
http://neptunus.approach.se/pdf/1_2001_The_Root
Re:No, they are about 20 years late. (Score:1)
Mind you, Americans always says they invented things first, so it could well be that the Slashdot story's a load of bollox...
Re:No, they are about 20 years late. (Score:1)
cell phone?? (Score:4, Interesting)
So when was the first cell boundary crossing without dropping the conversation?
That would be a date to remember.
points for identifing the quote: (Score:1)
(lower caps to pass the filter - muster)
Early "cell" phones (Score:5, Interesting)
The car phone looked a bit like a CB with a normal telephone handset attached instead of a CB mike. You didn't have a phone number as such, you had a call-sign. My Dad's was "Amber zero eighty six". You had to manually change the cell you were in with a switch on the front of the CB-like unit. The units came with a map to tell you where you should switch cells.
The bit you talked into was like a normal phone handset connected to the CB-like bit. Except it was half duplex and had a push-to-talk switch, so you were encouraged to say "Over" after you were done saying something to the person at the other end. The phones were incapable of dialing a number - you picked them up, and spoke to an operator who dialled the call for you, and then called you back when the other end answered. The operator couldn't tell who was calling - you had to give them your callsign so they could call you back.
The phones were made to ring (as far as I could tell - I wasn't very old at the time) by some kind of analogue tone signalling broadcast. When the phone recognised its tone sequence, it'd start to ring (well, beep loudly actually). The AirCall operator would then connect you to whoever called (or the party you were calling, if you were trying to make an outgoing call).
It was trivial to use the equipment to listen to everyone elses calls, too
Re:Early "cell" phones (Score:1)
Re:Early "cell" phones (Score:2)
And people think just talking on a modern cell phone is dangerous!
Can you hear me now? (Score:2)
Good!
And tomorrow marks... (Score:4, Funny)
First words were? (Score:2)
First cell phone call (Score:1)
Spotty coverage (Score:1)
Analog cellular phones... (Score:3, Interesting)
First cell phone call? (Score:3, Funny)
All wrong. (Score:2)
"lo! -'m -alling -ou -rom my -ell phone! Can -ou speak -ouder? -'m -aving -rouble -earing -ou! I'll -all ou -ack -rom a land -ine!"
TV memory (Score:1)
"No, it's not a pay phone, it's a CELLULAR PHONE!"
-the only scene from "That '80s Show" that anyone has ever seen.
The more things change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And the first message was.... (Score:2)
WASSSUUPPPPPPP!!!
Re:And the first message was.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And the first message was.... (Score:2)
I send you this file in order to have your advice.
See you later. Thanks
Re:And the first message was.... (Score:1)
he's messaged me again and told me if i stop, he'll stop. but honestly, i haven't done anything to provoke him.
i'm trying to see how many times he has posted that here, but the search function won't return what i need...this is more than a bit disturbing.