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On 3 April 1973 Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made the first public call from a handheld mobile phone while standing on Sixth Avenue in New York. He rang Joel Engel at the rival Bell Labs, which was working on phones for cars.

New York, 3 April 1973

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Until then a phone number belonged to a place: a house, an office, a phone box or, at best, a car. Car phones existed, but they needed about 14 kg of equipment in the boot. Cooper's prototype, the DynaTAC, weighed about 1.1 kg, was 25 cm long and was nicknamed 'the brick'. After ten hours of charging it gave about 30 minutes of talk; Cooper joked that this hardly mattered, because nobody could hold the phone up for that long. The call came just before a press conference at the New York Hilton, where Motorola presented its plans. It took ten more years to reach customers: the DynaTAC 8000X was approved in the United States in 1983 and went on sale the next year for $3,995. Cooper, born in Chicago in 1928, later founded several wireless communication companies.

Türkçe oku
Motorola mühendisi Martin Cooper, 3 Nisan 1973'te New York'ta Altıncı Cadde'nin kaldırımında durup elde taşınabilen bir telefonla herkesin gözü önünde ilk aramayı yaptı. Aradığı kişi, araç telefonları üzerinde çalışan rakip şirket Bell Labs'ten Joel Engel'di.
New York, 3 Nisan 1973

O güne kadar bir telefon numarası bir yere aitti: bir eve, bir ofise, bir telefon kulübesine ya da en fazla bir otomobile. Araç telefonları vardı, ama bagajda 14 kg kadar ekipman gerektiriyordu. Cooper'ın kullandığı prototip DynaTAC yaklaşık 1,1 kg ağırlığında ve 25 cm boyundaydı; ona “tuğla” lakabı takıldı. On saatlik şarjın ardından yaklaşık 30 dakika konuşma sağlıyordu. Cooper bununla ilgili şaka yapardı: Pilin kısa ömrü sorun değildi, çünkü kimse o telefonu zaten o kadar uzun süre kaldırıp tutamazdı. Arama, Motorola'nın planlarını tanıttığı New York Hilton'daki basın toplantısından hemen önce yapıldı. Telefonun müşteriye ulaşması on yıl daha sürdü: DynaTAC 8000X 1983'te ABD'de onay aldı, ertesi yıl 3.995 dolara satışa çıktı. 1928'de Chicago'da doğan Cooper, daha sonra birkaç kablosuz iletişim şirketi kurdu.

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Background reading: Martin Cooper (inventor)
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