On April 3, 1973, he placed the first public call from a handheld portable cell phone while working at Motorola, from a Manhattan sidewalk to his counterpart at competitor Bell Labs.

The first cell phone was created by Martin Cooper and his team at Motorola. The prototype, known as the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X , was the first handheld cellular phone. Cooper made the first publicized handheld cellular phone call on a prototype DynaTAC model on April 3, 1973.

Martin Cooper (born December 26, 1928, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American engineer who led the team that in 1972–73 built the first mobile cell phone and made the first cell phone call. He is widely regarded as the father of the cellular phone.

The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the late 1960s, in papers by Frenkiel and Porter.

Jan 20, 2025 · Born on December 26, 1928, in Chicago, Martin Cooper’s journey to becoming the “father of the cell phone” began long before that historic call. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Cooper earned his electrical engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1950.

Feb 27, 2024 · Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. And then in 1900, on December 23 on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., an inventor named Reginald Fessenden accomplished a remarkable feat: He made the first wireless telephone call. He was the first to transmit the human voice via radio waves, sending a signal from one radio tower to another.

Apr 3, 2023 · Engineer Martin Cooper made the world's first cellphone call on April 3, 1973, using a Motorola DynaTAC. Valerie Macon / AFP via Getty Images

Apr 3, 2023 · With encouragement from his boss, Motorola’s chief of portable communication products, John Mitchell, Cooper, and the engineers at Motorola produced the working prototype for the...

On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper made the first ever cellphone call on the streets of New York. His invention, a brick-sized device, became the first cellphone available to the general...

Jan 20, 2022 · Motorola’s chief of portable communication products, John F. Mitchell, encouraged his team to make the first cell phone and was crucial in the development of the technology. On April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer, Martin Cooper, rang his rival, Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, from the first cell phone.