News & Analysis
Hello? It’s Marty Cooper. Can you hear me?
Karen Field
11/15/2012 9:44 AM EST
Transistor specialist
As an engineering manager, Cooper worked on many new products, including the first push button mobile phones. He soon became a specialist in digital electronics and was one of the first engineers to put transistors into a commercial application.
“Our first all-transistor mobile telephone had less than 100 transistors, but we were always trying to reduce that number because they cost us 50 cents each!” recalls Martin. He marvels over the fact that transistor counts in the billions are routine today.
The idea of Motorola developing a cellular telephone was an obvious next step. “We had been dreaming about this technology for a long time and had people in our own research labs working on all of the parts,” says Martin. “But though I knew that it could be done, at the same time we were pushing the technology envelope on almost every front.”
Nobody, for example, had ever built an antenna operating at 1 GHz in the small form factor needed. And nobody had ever designed a frequency synthesizer that could work reasonably well with low power drain. In fact, very few people were designing anything at all for battery operation.
“We needed power amps, we needed receiver amps, we needed synthesizers and we had to go to experts for every one of them, and then someone had to integrate the whole thing together,” says Cooper.
In spite of the daunting technological challenges, Motorola managed to crank out a working prototype in three months.
“First thing I told the engineers was to forget about the form factor and just get something to work,” says Cooper.
Under the leadership of Engineer Don Linder, engineers figured out how to combine some 300 to 400 parts together into a working phone and then squeeze the design into a 9 x 5 x 1.75 inch form factor. A huge nickel-cadmium battery, which had a charge of about 20 minutes, accounted for 40% of the weight of the 2.5-lb prototype.
Almost as soon as Cooper made his famous call, Motorola began working on a smaller, lighter, more affordable version of the phone that was reproducible. But it would be ten years and more than $100M dollars spent before Motorola began selling the DynaTAC8000x, for $3995 in 1983.
It included two features: You could make and receive phone calls.
Given that making a phone call is almost secondary to a modern day phone’s other capabilities, did Cooper envision the path of the first handheld cell phone’s trajectory?
“We knew that wireless was going to revolutionize us and that everybody was going to have a phone,” he says. “But the one thing I could not have begun to imagine was the impact of digital technology. Remember we were just getting started. If I had talked about putting 1,000 transistors in a phone, people would have assumed I was out of my mind.”
As an engineering manager, Cooper worked on many new products, including the first push button mobile phones. He soon became a specialist in digital electronics and was one of the first engineers to put transistors into a commercial application.
“Our first all-transistor mobile telephone had less than 100 transistors, but we were always trying to reduce that number because they cost us 50 cents each!” recalls Martin. He marvels over the fact that transistor counts in the billions are routine today.
The idea of Motorola developing a cellular telephone was an obvious next step. “We had been dreaming about this technology for a long time and had people in our own research labs working on all of the parts,” says Martin. “But though I knew that it could be done, at the same time we were pushing the technology envelope on almost every front.”
Nobody, for example, had ever built an antenna operating at 1 GHz in the small form factor needed. And nobody had ever designed a frequency synthesizer that could work reasonably well with low power drain. In fact, very few people were designing anything at all for battery operation.
“We needed power amps, we needed receiver amps, we needed synthesizers and we had to go to experts for every one of them, and then someone had to integrate the whole thing together,” says Cooper.
In spite of the daunting technological challenges, Motorola managed to crank out a working prototype in three months.
“First thing I told the engineers was to forget about the form factor and just get something to work,” says Cooper.
Under the leadership of Engineer Don Linder, engineers figured out how to combine some 300 to 400 parts together into a working phone and then squeeze the design into a 9 x 5 x 1.75 inch form factor. A huge nickel-cadmium battery, which had a charge of about 20 minutes, accounted for 40% of the weight of the 2.5-lb prototype.
Almost as soon as Cooper made his famous call, Motorola began working on a smaller, lighter, more affordable version of the phone that was reproducible. But it would be ten years and more than $100M dollars spent before Motorola began selling the DynaTAC8000x, for $3995 in 1983.
It included two features: You could make and receive phone calls.
Given that making a phone call is almost secondary to a modern day phone’s other capabilities, did Cooper envision the path of the first handheld cell phone’s trajectory?
“We knew that wireless was going to revolutionize us and that everybody was going to have a phone,” he says. “But the one thing I could not have begun to imagine was the impact of digital technology. Remember we were just getting started. If I had talked about putting 1,000 transistors in a phone, people would have assumed I was out of my mind.”
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Bobgh
11/27/2012 9:23 PM EST
In recent months, I have seen several accounts in the press discussing Martin Cooper's role in the development of the cell phone. I worked for Martin at Motorola Communications and Industrial Electronics (C&IE) from November 1959 to June 1960. Motorola was developing the latest in a series of two way radio products of ever smaller size. These developments were part of an evolutionary process that led eventually to the cell phone. I was fresh out of school and my contributions were of no particular significance.
But let me tell you about something I observed on a daily basis at Motorola's plant in Chicago. Motorola C&IE had two black employees. They tended an incinerator on the opposite side of the parking lot from the plant. They were not allowed into the building. Not to take a break or eat lunch. Not to use the rest rooms. Not to warm up in the middle of Chicago's sub zero winters. And my fellow employees would take their breaks at the second floor windows overlooking that parking lot, and they would make insulting, racist comments about the two black employees.
I went to human relations, and in the most non-confrontational way that I could muster I asked why Motorola did not employ on the basis of ability, without regard to race. And at my six month review, I was terminated.
You don't have to take my word concerning Motorola's employment policies. In September of 1980, Motorola agreed to pay up to $10 million in back pay to some 11,000 blacks who were denied jobs over a seven-year period and to institute a $5 million affirmative action program, according to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
I have a question for Martin Cooper. Marty, what did you ever do to challenge the blatant, toxic racial discrimination at Motorola?
Robert Gilchrist Huenemann, M.S.E.E.
120 Harbern Way
Hollister, CA 95023-9708
831-635-0786
bobgh@razzolink.com
https://sites.google.com/site/bobhuenemann/
Extra Class Amateur Radio License W6RFW
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Bobgh
11/27/2012 9:25 PM EST
In recent months, I have seen several accounts in the press discussing Martin Cooper's role in the development of the cell phone. I worked for Martin at Motorola Communications and Industrial Electronics (C&IE) from November 1959 to June 1960. Motorola was developing the latest in a series of two way radio products of ever smaller size. These developments were part of an evolutionary process that led eventually to the cell phone. I was fresh out of school and my contributions were of no particular significance.
But let me tell you about something I observed on a daily basis at Motorola's plant in Chicago. Motorola C&IE had two black employees. They tended an incinerator on the opposite side of the parking lot from the plant. They were not allowed into the building. Not to take a break or eat lunch. Not to use the rest rooms. Not to warm up in the middle of Chicago's sub zero winters. And my fellow employees would take their breaks at the second floor windows overlooking that parking lot, and they would make insulting, racist comments about the two black employees.
I went to human relations, and in the most non-confrontational way that I could muster I asked why Motorola did not employ on the basis of ability, without regard to race. And at my six month review, I was terminated.
You don't have to take my word concerning Motorola's employment policies. In September of 1980, Motorola agreed to pay up to $10 million in back pay to some 11,000 blacks who were denied jobs over a seven-year period and to institute a $5 million affirmative action program, according to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
I have a question for Martin Cooper. Marty, what did you ever do to challenge the blatant, toxic racial discrimination at Motorola?
Robert Gilchrist Huenemann, M.S.E.E.
120 Harbern Way
Hollister, CA 95023-9708
831-635-0786
bobgh@razzolink.com
https://sites.google.com/site/bobhuenemann/
Extra Class Amateur Radio License W6RFW
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Mark.Rackin
12/11/2012 2:55 PM EST
It's good to see Marty still around and involved. Back in 1970, I worked in the Motorola Research Labs in the brand-new Schaumburg facility. I did have a (very) small part in the story: I had worked on making inexpensive plastic transistors (originally intended for fast switching) work as low-noise VHF/UHF signal amps. I was assigned to be a consultant to Marty's project to share my results and help make the early prototypes work with mass-produced silicon instead of the (20x more expensive)ones then favored.
Mark Rackin, W4LGN (back in ancient times, K2UWN, then W9JZY)
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