The mobile phone is celebrating its 50th birthday this year. On April 3, 1973, the first public call was made from a cellular phone. Sign of the times, it was an engineer from the American company Motorola who made the first call.
We can’t say that Motorola has used the last 50 years to maintain its position as a leader in mobility. And by the way, if you want a picture that illustrates how mobile telephony has evolved over the past 50 years, the first cell phone, called DynaTAC, was about the size of a brick, weighed 1.5 kilos and cost only a few , who are in a hurry to adopt the latest technology of the time, 4000 dollars.
Also, few were in any real hurry to switch to cellphones. It took 10 years for Motorola and the first wireless carriers, including AT&T in the United States, to really kickstart the wireless market.
In the meantime, of course, a lot has changed in mobile phones. It got a lot smaller, then it got connected to the internet, and today a simple iPhone is more powerful than the most powerful supercomputers of the 20th century.
It’s not all good. Martin Cooper, the Motorola engineer who made that famous first call 50 years ago, laments the over-reliance we place on our phones these days. We look at it all the time, and it provokes very reckless gestures.
We see many people crossing the street without looking too far ahead, too busy with what’s showing on their phones. This is obviously a more important issue today than it was in 1973. At the same time, it begs the next question: Can we imagine where mobile telephony will be in another 50 years?