Martin Cooper (inventor)
| Martin Cooper | |
|---|---|
Martin Cooper in 2010
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| Born |
December 26, 1928 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Residence | Del Mar, California, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Illinois Institute of Technology (B.S.E.E.; M.S.E.E.) |
| Occupation | Inventor Entrepreneur Executive |
| Employer | Motorola Founder & CEO of ArrayComm Co-Founder & Chairman of Dyna LLC |
| Known for | Inventing handheld cellular mobile phone Making world's first handheld cellular mobile phone call. |
| Spouse(s) | Arlene Harris (m. 1991) |
| Awards | Marconi Prize (2013) |
| Website | www.dynallc.com |
Martin "Marty" Cooper (born December 26, 1928) is an American engineer. He is a pioneer and visionary in the wireless communications industry. With eleven patents in the field, he is recognized as an innovator in radio spectrum management.
While at Motorola in the 1970s, Cooper invented the first handheld cellular mobile phone (distinct from the car phone) in 1973 and led the team that developed it and brought it to market in 1983. He is considered the "father of the cell phone" and is also cited as the first person in history to make a handheld cellular phone call in public.
Cooper is co-founder of numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner Arlene Harris; also known as the "first lady of wireless." He is co-founder and current Chairman of Dyna LLC, in Del Mar, California. Cooper also sits on committees supporting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Commerce.
Cooper graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1950. After graduating he enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve where he served as a submarine officer during the Korean War. In 1957 Cooper went on to earn his master's degree from IIT in electrical engineering and in 2004 IIT awarded Cooper an honorary doctorate degree. He serves on the University's Board of Trustees.
Cooper left his first job at Teletype Corporation in Chicago in 1954 and joined Motorola, Inc. (Schaumburg, Illinois) as a senior development engineer in the mobile equipment group. He developed many products including the first cellular-like portable handheld police radio system, produced for the Chicago police department in 1967.
By the early 1970s, Cooper headed up Motorola's communications systems division. Here he conceived of the first portable cellular phone in 1973 and led the 10-year process of bringing it to market.Car phones had been in limited use in large U.S. cities since the 1930s but Cooper defied the industry's narrow vision of car phones and championed cellular telephony for personal, portable communications. Cooper knew that people needed the freedom of anytime, anywhere telephony. He knew the cellular phone should be a "personal telephone – something that would represent an individual so you could assign a number; not to a place, not to a desk, not to a home, but to a person." While it has been stated Cooper's vision for the handheld device was inspired by Captain James T. Kirk using his Communicator on the television show Star Trek, Cooper himself later refuted this, stating that his actual inspiration was Dick Tracy's wrist radio.
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Wikipedia