Part I: Wireless roots
Like many of the great revolutions, it was born out of necessity.

Owing more to Walkie-Talkies than actual phones, the earliest mobile calls can be traced to the early 1900s, when Australia’s Victorian Police devised a method of wireless communication between squad cars and dispatchers. The concept quickly caught on and gradually began to spread to other countries, reaching the United States by the 1930s; the first known U.S. two-way radio system is credited to the Bayonne, N.J., police department.

By 1940, Motorola precursor Galvin Manufacturing Company developed a mobile two-way radio system via a hefty wired backpack. The SCR-300 “Walkie-Talkie,” designed by Marion Bond, Henryk Magnuski, Lloyd Morris, Dan Noble, Bill Vogel and Raymond Yoder, weighed about 40 pounds and had a range of approximately 3 miles. Portable in the loosest sense of the word, Motorola quickly followed up the 300 with the SCR-536, a handheld version of its popular Walkie-Talkie built to meet the demands of the U.S. Army during World War II. As the technology proved successful on the battlefield--most notably during the Invasion of Normandy--Motorola sold more than 100,000 of its “Handie-Talkie” model during the war.

At around the same time, the Federal Communication Commission formulated a radio service called Citizens Band to allow hobbyists to communicate over short distances of one to five miles. Not unlike the dedicated frequencies already allocated for firefighters and police officers, CB radio, as it came to be called, provided regulated channels for quick bursts of dialogue that just couldn’t wait.

But neither Handie-Talkies, which were limited by a closed network, nor CB transmitters, which didn’t allow for targeted calls, were able to replicate the reach-out-and-touch-someone experience of a home phone.

All that would change in 1973.



Part II: A Dyna-mite breakthrough

On April 3, 1973, Motorola vice president Dr. Martin Cooper walked down Sixth Avenue in New York City using the world’s first handled mobile telephone to call his rival at AT&T Bell Labs, where the project had originated 15 years earlier. Weighing about two and a half pounds and requiring a kung-fu grip, Cooper's casual call touched off a decade-long race to bring the first cellular telephone to the market:

“As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call,” Martin said on the 30th anniversary of the call. “Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter — probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.”

Dangerous? Maybe. Groundbreaking? Most certainly. The prototype phone Cooper used--a Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage (DynaTAC) handheld cellular phone connected to AT&T’s wired phone system via a base station on the roof of a nearby building--provided all the makings of a modern cellular network, albeit with far less portability.

With a working demo under his belt, Cooper set out to make a version of the DynaTAC fit for consumer use (and FCC approval). Ten years and $100 million later, he had one.

On March 6, 1983, Motorola released its slightly less-bricky DynaTAC 8000X, a beige, 3.5-inch-thick handset with a black face adorned with 21 keys (standard phone pad plus dedicated “Recall,” “Clear,” “Send,” “Store,” “Function,” “End,” “Power,” “Lock” and “Volume” buttons) and a 9-character LED readout. It operated on Bell Labs’ analog Advanced Mobile Phone System, which divided radio frequencies into hexagonal cells to create a seamless “cellular” network.

While light enough at just over two pounds to carry in a backpack or briefcase, the DynaTAC’s battery allowed just 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby. But despite its limitations--and a hefty $3,995 price tag--the revolutionary 8000X was an instant success.

Overseas, Finland-based Nokia Corporation was making strides of its own. With the Nordic Mobile Telephone mobile phone network already in place for car phones, Nokia acquired mobile radio manufacturer Salora Oy in the early 1980s and in 1984 spun off Nokia-Mobira Oy, a dedicated telecommunications division; soon after, the company launched its first “portable” product, the Mobira Talkman, which provided several hours of talk time but required the user to carry an 11-pound briefcase in order to make calls.

Three years later, however, Nokia vastly improved on its behemoth with the Mobira Cityman 900, the first truly mobile phone built for the NMT network. Nicknamed the Gorba--after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was photographed using one--the Cityman weighed about as much as a DynaTAC and cost about twice as much, but sold just as well. Following the success of its new venture, Nokia dropped Mobira from the company’s name and folded the whole division back into the main company, and Motorola’s biggest competitor, Nokia Mobile Phones, was born.

Despite the popularity and cachet of these early cell phones, however, they still played second fiddle to less-expensive car phones--such as the Mobira Senator NMT-450--that offered better call quality in a neat, convenient package that didn’t rely on an underwhelming battery. Even after Motorola introduced its innovative MicroTAC flip phone--billed as the lightest (12.3 ounces) and smallest (9 inches) phone on the market and described as “a technological and administrative tour de force”--the U.S. cellular market struggled to expand beyond its niche market of wealthy businessmen, doctors and lawyers; by the time the ’90s rolled around, cellular subscriptions had barely topped 3 million in the United States.



Part III: Global swarming

While Motorola was putting the finishing touches on its DynaTAC in 1982, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administration’s Electronic Communications Committee was already laying the groundwork for a second-generation European mobile network capable of handling digital voice calls and data transmission. After several starts and stops, the first Groupe Spécial Mobile cellular network (later Global System for Mobile Communications) was launched cooperatively by Radiolinja and Ericsson in 1991.

On July 1, 1992, Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call using a Nokia handset, and on Nov. 10, 1992, the company released the Nokia 1011, a black, slimline GSM handset with 90 minutes of talk time and the ability to send short, textual messages to other users. As the phone caught on, GSM quickly spread throughout Europe and Asia, and by the end of 1995, American Personal Communications had launched the first commercial U.S. GSM service.

With a powerful digital system in place, a new batch of phones naturally followed. Once again, Motorola made the biggest splash with a first-of-its-kind handset that improved on the fresh style introduced with the MicroTAC. Released on Jan. 3, 1996, the “wearable” StarTAC introduced the world to the timeless clamshell design, which featured a flip cover that extended over the entire length of the phone. Clocking in at about $1,000, the StarTAC weighed just 3 ounces, fit comfortably in any pocket and allowed for about three hours of talk time. While offering a GSM model for use overseas (and with the few burgeoning U.S. carriers), Motorola stuck with the popular analog AMPS system with the U.S. launch of the new phone.

Korean company Samsung--which had already taken a serious bite out of Motorola’s dominance in the far east with its SH-700 series of phones and turned heads with its first CDMA handset in March 1996, the skinny, lightweight SGH-200--didn’t fare quite as well with its GSM offerings. The SGH-200, intended to make serious inroads throughout the rest of Europe, barely registered in the increasingly crowded cellular market until September 1998, when the high-end SGH-600 flip phone was unveiled to rave reviews for its slim design, 5-hour battery and voice-activated dialing.

As prices dropped and networks became clearer and more ubiquitous, cell phones slowly shed their luxury stigma as they began to receive greater functionality beyond calls and SMS messages.

Next: The Complete History of Cell Phones Continued >>