CELL PHONES
BY: CARTER MOORE
I. Introduction-
The cell phone is one of the most widely used pieces of technology in the world. The first telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander graham bell and it was almost exactly 100 years after until the cell phone was invented by Dr. Martin Cooper in 1973.
II. History-
1843 - A skilled analytical chemist by the name of Michael Faraday began exhaustive research into whether space could conduct electricity. (thehistoryof.net)
1865 - Dr. Mahlon Loomis of Virginia, a dentist, may have been the first person to communicate through wireless through the atmosphere. Between 1866 and 1873 he transmitted messages at a distance of 18 miles between the tops of Coshocton and Beorse Deer Mountains in Virginia. He developed a method of transmitting and receiving messages by using the Earth's atmosphere as a conductor and launching kites enclosed with a copper screens that were linked to the ground with copper wires. (thehistoryof.net)
1973 - Dr Martin Cooper, is considered the inventor of the first portable handset. Dr. Cooper, former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, and the first person to make a call on a portable cellular phone. (thehistoryof.net)
1973 - Dr. Cooper set up a base station in New York with the first working prototype of a cellular telephone, the Motorola Dyna-Tac. Dr. Cooper and Motorola took the phone technology to New York to show the public. (thehistoryof.net)
1977 - Public cell phone testing began. The city of Chicago was where the first trials began with 2000 customers, and eventually other cell phone trials appeared in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area. Japan began testing cellular phone service in 1979. (thehistoryof.net)
III. Journal Article-
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/23/1707.short
In this article they say that after much research and the following of many Danish cell phone users over a span of 21 years, these people, all 420,095, that first subscribed to a cellular telephone company between 1982 and 1995 were followed up in 2002 and of all 14,249 cancers that were found none were related to the use of cellular telephones.
IV. Biography-
Martin Cooper was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 26, 1928, and earned his Bachelors and Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Prior to working at Motorola in 1954, he served in the Navy for 4 years, working on destroyers, and on submarines. In the early years at Motorola, he worked on portable products, including hand radios, made for the Chicago Police Department in 1967. Shortly after this project, he began working on Motorola's Cellular Research project, and developed the 3lb prototype from his base in Washington. On April 3, 1973, standing on Sixth Avenue in New York City near the New York Hilton hotel, Cooper made a phone call from a prototype Dyna-Tac hand-held cellular phone before going to a press conference upstairs in the hotel. The phone connected Cooper with the base station on the roof of the Burlington House (now the Alliance Capital Building) across the street from the hotel and into the AT&T land-line telephone system.
V. Impact on Humanity-
It took cell phone companies 37 years to make cell phones available all over the US. According to the CTIA today there are more than 250 million people who have cell phones. Cell phones have revolutionized and streamlined the way we communicate.
VI. Bibliography-
How a Cell Phone Call Works | Cellphones.org. (n.d.). Cell Phones. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://cellphones.org/blog/how-a-cell-phone-call-works/
HowStuffWorks "Search". (n.d.). HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works!. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=cell+phones
Leard, G. (n.d.). Biography: Martin Cooper - by George Leard - Helium. Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.helium.com/items/1235159-martin-cooper-mobile-phone-inventions-whartonmotorola-attwireless-technology-innovatators
The History of Cell Phones – A Vision Realized | TheHistoryOf.net. (n.d.). TheHistoryOf.net. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.thehistoryof.net/history-of-cell-phones.html
Image 1: http://www.puremobile.com/communityblog/cell-phones/5-reasons-why-retro-cell-phones-suck/
Image 2: http://forums.mwerks.com/showthread.php?4754568
Image 3: http://skattertech.com/2010/06/infographic-evo-4g-vs-iphone-4-vs-droid-x/
