The 3rd of April 2003 marked the 30th anniversary of the first ever telephone call made public, placed on a portable cellular phone. The now chairman, ceo and co-founder of ArrayComm inc, made that historic call on April 3rd 1973 whilst he was general manager of Motorola’s Communications Systems Division.

This was the embodiment of his vision for personal wireless communications, separate from cellular car phones. That first call, directed to Cooper’s rival at AT&T’S Bell labs from the streets of New York City, caused a fundamental technology and communications market shift toward the person and away from the place.

"People want to talk to other people - not a house, or an office, or a car. Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. It is that freedom we sought to vividly demonstrate in 1973," Stated Martin Cooper.

Mr Cooper added, "As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life."

After that historic April 3rd public demonstration, using a "brick" – like 30-ounce handset, Cooper began the process of bringing the portable cell phone to the market, taking around 10 years to do so. Costing the consumer $3,500, Motorola introduced the new 16 ounce "DynaTac" phone into commercial service in 1983.

It took a further 7 years before there were even a million subscribers in the United States. In this day and age there are more mobile subscribers than wire line phone subscribers in the world, with mobile phones weighing as little as just 3 ounces!

Martin Cooper Today

Martin Cooper’s role in constructing and developing the primary portable cellular phone directly affected his choice to found and lead ArrayComm, a wireless technology and systems company founded in 1992.

ArrayComm’s core adaptive antenna technology increases the capacity and coverage of any cellular system, while significantly lowering costs and making speech more reliable. This technology draws attention to what Cooper called "the unfulfilled promise! Of cellular, which should be, but still isn’t as reliable or affordable as wired telephony.

To make the internet "personal", ArrayComm had also used its adaptive antenna technology and created the i-BURST personal Broadband system, which delivers affordable high speed mobile internet access for the consumer.

"It's very exciting to be part of a movement toward making broadband available to people with the same freedom to be anywhere that they have for voice communications today," said Martin Cooper.

"People rely heavily on the Internet for their work, entertainment and communication, but they need to be unleashed. We will look back at 2003 as the beginning of the era when the Internet became truly untethered."

Source : inventors.about. com / cs/ inventorsalphabet/a/martin_cooper. htm