The first handheld mobile telephone call is generally dated to 3 April 1973, when Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer, called his rival Joel Engel at Bell Labs from a street in New York using a prototype that later became the Motorola DynaTAC. Earlier car phones had existed since the 1940s, but they were bulky and could serve only a few users. Cellular networks, which divide a territory into small cells and reuse radio frequencies, made mobile phones practical for mass use. The first commercial cellular network was launched in Japan in 1979, and the DynaTAC went on sale in the United States in 1983. Digital systems such as GSM, introduced in 1991, improved quality and allowed text messaging. The launch of the smartphone in the 2000s turned the mobile phone into a pocket computer.
Before and after
- 26 December 1972Death of Harry S. Truman
- 1973Establishment of Chitwan National Park
- 1973Founding of Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- 1973Construction of London Bridge
- 1973Mobile phone
- 1973Construction of Van Gogh Museum
- from 1973 to 2018Oromo conflict
- 1973Publication of The Gulag Archipelago
- 1973Founding of Islamic Development Bank
More in Science & technology
- 1945Invention of computer
- 29 October 1969Invention of Internet
- 1971Email
- July 2000Discovery of livermorium
- 15 January 2001Wikipedia
- 20 October 2004Creation of Ubuntu
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.