38 years have passed since the first cell phone call

Yesterday, 38 years passed since Dr.Martin Cooper of Motorola placed the first phone call on a cell phonewhile taking a stroll on the streets of New York City in the distantApril 3rd of 1973. Cooper made a dazzling demonstration by calling noneother than rival Dr. Engel, research chief of Bell Labs, closely tiedto AT&T at the time. Passers-by on Sixth Avenue must have lookedin awe as Cooper picked up his 2.2-pound Motorola DynaTAC handset forthe brief call. Cooper is now viewed as the creator of the cellulartelephone, which at the time wouldhave put you back a whopping $3500.

Cellular technology was being developedin the times of WWII, but it wasn't until the 70's until it saw widercommercialization. A quick flashback to early phone days shows thatmass adoption of the first generation of cell phones actuallyhappened in Japan in 1979, covering metropolitan Tokyo with 23 basestations. Nordic European countries followed suit in 1981 andlaunched the first roaming network between Sweden, Denmark, Norwayand... Finland, of course. In 1983, the metropolitan Chicago areajoined the bandwagon stateside.

Finland was the place where innovationhappened in following years as the first 2G network was launched in the home country of today's largest phone maker, Nokia.It was the first true digital solution, which opened a brand new range ofservices like text messaging (1993, Finland), ringtones (1998,Finland) and Internet service (1999, Japan). This brings us to moderntimes and the 3G wideband networks, introduced in 2001. They not onlybrought the HSPA protocol for fast data transfers, but were alsocompatible with the previous generation of networks.

That's how it all started, and todayour cell phones communicate with satellites to pin-point our locationwith amazing precision and we're on the verge of converting to 4G LTEas the main communication standard. Check out our in-depth look at the enticing possibilites of LTE, but to get a sense ofhow it all started, skip to the video below, where the creator of thecell phone himself speaks about the technology.

source: AT&Tand Wikipedia (1), (2)