The story of the phone from Graham Bell to Steve Jobs

If, two decades ago, I asked ten people about the greatest invention known to mankind, I would usually have received one response: “the wheel.” Ask ten people today about the greatest invention, and the answer will be: “The smartphone.” The innovation that the world celebrated this month its twenty-fifth birthday. Although his story began much earlier.

In 1876 the world witnessed the birth of the telephone.. It took almost a hundred years (in 1973) for the world to witness the birth of the first mobile phone. But the real revolution began with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 by the American technology giant Apple. Although the iPhone was not the first smartphone, it was the first phone with an easy-to-use interface. Later this phone was adapted to 3G technology, which has been available since 2001.

First phone call

The story of the telephone began in the modest office of an ambitious Scottish engineer named Graham Bell, who created a revolution that changed the concept of communication across the world. An adjoining room is the first phone call humanity has made.

Soon, a large industry grew around this invention, which included a global communications network, and massive investments in infrastructure. And the world had to wait for another genius, the American engineer Martin Cooper, who joined in 1954 to work for Motorola, and contributed to the creation of the first mobile phone in 1973, but it was not put on the global market until ten years after that date. Despite its high price at the time, equivalent to 10 thousand dollars today, the Motorola phone has achieved wide spread among the wealthy class and politicians.

The idea for the mobile phone originated with Cooper, who earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology and a master's degree from the same institute in the early 1970s, at a time when cell phones were impractical devices built into car dashboards.

Whatever doubts some raise, the world unanimously agrees that the call that Bill made with his aide was the first phone call made by humanity.

70 years ago, someone who wanted to talk on a mobile phone had to carry a device that weighed more than twelve kilograms and had modest coverage. As for the connection itself, it was carried out by an “employee at the switch”, and it was cut off as soon as he left the wireless signal coverage area. Because of the high costs of this method, mobile communication remained the preserve of politicians and corporate managers.

There were only a few wireless channels to make calls, and users often had to wait a long time for a channel to become available.

No sooner had Cooper took charge of Motorola's car phone division, he immediately decided that these products should not only be used in cars, but should be small and light to be carried around at all times. "I had the idea of ​​turning products into portable things," he says.

From the birth of the idea in its infancy until the appearance of the prototype to the light, it took 90 days, and that was in the year 1972 when Cooper announced a design competition under his auspices among Motorola engineers, and at the dinner he held in December of the same year, each engineer came to present his prototype, and said Cooper at the time, "we decided to pick the least bright phones, and the most simple."

The dazzling show was when Cooper decided to make a phone call using the device on the third of April 1973, after Motorola held a press conference to present its phone to the world at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. T” to tell him that he is talking to him on a mobile phone.

The era of mobile communication

Memories of the first day of the advent of mobile communications, and their distracting effect, always had Cooper, and he expressed it with a smile, saying, "I was talking and walking towards the street until I was almost hit by a car."

Finally, Cooper's efforts resulted in a phone called "Dina Talk" that allows 35 minutes of talking, and weighs one kilogram. After four subsequent attempts, Cooper's team reached a weight reduction in half.

In an interview, more than thirty years after the first appearance of the mobile, Cooper talked about his exciting experience using the world's first mobile and how people on the streets of New York looked at him in amazement while he was holding the phone and talking.

Motorola, which started the mobile race, succeeded in launching the first pocket-sized device in the market in 1989, the “MicroTak” phone, and it was the first phone with a cover that can be opened and closed. With this phone, companies started to produce smaller and more accurate mobile phones.

In the summer of 1992, Motorola opened the era of digital mobile communications, as it became possible to make international phone calls with mobile phones, at the same time that the development of these phones continued. The Motorola International 3200, affectionately known as the "Great," compared to phones of the time, is very small. It is also considered the first mobile phone with a data transfer capacity of up to 220 kilobits per second.

The success described as unparalleled was the introduction of the Short Message Service (SMS) in 1994. Initially, this service was intended to send messages about wireless signal strength or any network defect to customers. But these messages, each of which does not exceed 160 characters, turned into the most used services after the same phone call. And many young people have developed special abbreviations for these messages.

With the beginning of 1997, the demand for mobile phones began to increase rapidly, especially phones with covers that can be opened and closed and that can be pulled out. The relatively cheap prices of these devices, as well as the introduction of prepaid cards, have turned mobile phones into a popular product.

The world had to wait until 1996, to receive the first smartphone.

In the mid-nineties, IBM introduced what is considered the first of these phones, a phone equipped with computer software and connected to the Internet, but its battery was exhausted within only an hour.

technology revolution

From that moment on, the steps of development began to accelerate, to highlight the name of the Finnish company Nokia, which surprised the world with its “Nokia 9000 Communicate” phone, on August 15, 1996. It weighed 400 grams and was the first phone that could connect to the Internet, and was promoted as a “pocket-sized office.” The phone, which had a price of 2,700 German marks (about 1,340 euros), was aimed mainly at businessmen.

The Nokia 7110 phone, produced in 1999, was the first wireless application protocol (WAP) mobile phone, which contains applications for using the mobile Internet. Although this application was nothing more than a reduction of the Internet in text form, it was a revolutionary step for mobile phones. This telephone was followed by similar telephones that combined a telephone, fax, and pager.

The development of mobile phones proceeded very quickly, and it became natural for the mobile phone to include a color screen, a player for music files, a radio and a video recorder. Thanks to WAP and GPRS technologies, users can surf the Internet in a compact form on their devices.

Another imprint that Motorola left on phones by launching RAZR in 2004, a phone equipped with a camera, it was marketed as a “fashion”, and more than 50 million phones were sold from it until mid-2006. But the technology contained in this phone was not revolutionary, but its appearance was impressive. . With RAZR, mobile phones have got a new face.

This transformation led to the so-called “technical industrial revolution” in 2007, when Apple introduced the “iPhone”, changing with it the features of the phone and communications forever.

The advent of the fourth generation of communications technology in 2009, contributed to making mobile and smart phones more efficient, as it provided them with a good connection to the Internet, which increased the available options.

And the “fifth generation network” that began to spread in 2019, allowed smartphones to download a much higher speed than before, which actually enables smartphones to become an “office in a pocket!