WHO INVENTED THE MOBILE PHONE?

Ken Poole

The invention of the first handheld mobile phone is credited to Dr Martin Cooper and his team at Motorola in April 1973. The first call he made was to rival inventor Joel Engel at Bell Laboratories, who had also been racing to invent the first mobile phone. Before this time, radiophones on board ships and in cars were available. However, Cooper’s phone was the first truly handheld modern mobile phone. It weighed in at around two kilograms and had a battery life of only 20 minutes. According to Cooper, this didn’t matter as you couldn’t really hold the phone up for that long!