Martin Cooper
Cooper in 2007
Born	(1928-12-26) December 26, 1928 (age 96) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Other names	Marty Cooper
Education	Illinois Institute of Technology (BS, MS)
Occupations	Inventor entrepreneur executive
Known for	Inventor of the first handheld cellular mobile phone
Title	Motorola Founder & CEO of ArrayComm Co-founder and chairman of Dyna LLC
Spouse	Arlene Harris (m. 1991)
Awards	Marconi Prize (2013), ITU 150 Awards (2015)^[1]
Website	www.dynallc.com

Martin Cooper (born December 26, 1928) is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field.^[2]^[3]

On April 3, 1973, Cooper 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.^[4]^[5] Cooper reprised the first handheld cellular mobile phone (distinct from the car phone) in 1973 and led the team that redeveloped it and brought it to market in 1983.^[6]^[7] He is considered the "father of the (handheld) cell phone".^[2]^[6]^[8]^[9]

Cooper is co-founder of numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner Arlene Harris;^[10] 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^[11] and the United States Department of Commerce.

In 2010, Cooper was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in the creation and deployment of the cellular portable hand-held telephone.

Education

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Cooper was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.^[12]^[13]^[14] He graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1950 and served as a submarine officer during the Korean War.^[2]

In 1957, he earned his master's degree from IIT in electrical engineering and in 2004 received an honorary doctorate degree from IIT. He serves on the university's board of trustees.

Career

[edit]

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Motorola

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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 products including the first cellular-like portable handheld police radio system, produced for the Chicago police department in 1967.^[15]^[16]

By the early 1970s, Cooper headed Motorola's communications systems division.^[4] Here he conceived of the first portable cellular phone in 1973 and led the 10-year process of bringing it to market.^[8] Car phones had been in limited use in large U.S. cities since the 1930s but Cooper championed cellular telephony for more general personal, portable communications.^[17] He believed 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."^[4]

Top management at Motorola supported Cooper's mobile phone concept, investing $100 million between 1973 and 1993 before any revenues were realized.^[18] Cooper assembled a team that designed and assembled a product in less than 90 days. That original handset, called the DynaTAC 8000x (DYNamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) weighed 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg), measured 10 inches (25 cm) long and was dubbed "the brick" or "the shoe" phone.^[19] A very substantial part of the DynaTAC was the battery, which weighed four to five times more than a modern cell phone.^[7] The phone had only 30 minutes of talk time before requiring a 10-hour recharge but according to Cooper, "The battery lifetime wasn't really a problem because you couldn't hold that phone up for that long!" By 1983 and after four iterations, the handset was reduced to half its original weight.

Cooper is the lead inventor named on "radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973, with the U.S. Patent Office and later issued as U.S. Patent 3,906,166.^[20] John Francis Mitchell, Motorola's Chief of Portable Communication Products (and Cooper's Manager and Mentor) and the engineers who worked for Cooper and Mitchell are also named on the patent.

On April 3, 1973, Cooper and Mitchell demonstrated two working phones to the media and to passers-by prior to walking into a scheduled press conference at the New York City Hilton in midtown Manhattan. Standing on Sixth avenue near the Hilton, Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call in public from the prototype DynaTAC. The call connected him to a base station Motorola had installed on the roof of the Burlington House (now the AllianceBernstein Building) and into the AT&T land-line telephone system.^[15] Reporters and onlookers watched as Cooper dialed the number of his chief competitor Dr. Joel S. Engel at AT&T.^[21] "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone."^[22] That public demonstration landed the DynaTAC on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science Magazine.^[15] As Cooper recalls from the experience: "I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter – probably one of the most dangerous things I have ever done in my life."

That first cell phone began a fundamental technology and communications market shift to making phone calls to a person instead of to a place.^[6]^[19] Bell Labs had introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947, but their first systems were limited to car phones which required roughly 30 pounds (12 kg) of equipment in the trunk.^[21] Motorola gained Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for cellular licenses to be assigned to competing entities and prevented an AT&T monopoly on cellular service.^[15]

Cooper worked at Motorola for 29 years; building and managing both its paging and cellular businesses. He also led the creation of trunked mobile radio, quartz crystal oscillators, liquid crystal displays, piezo-electric components, Motorola A.M. stereo technology and various mobile and portable two-way radio product lines.

Cooper rose to Vice-President and Corporate Director of Research and Development at Motorola.^[2] In addition to his work on the mobile cellular phone, he was instrumental in expanding the technology of pagers from use within a single building to use across multiple cities.^[8] Cooper also worked with inventor Clifford L. Rose to fix a flaw in quartz crystals used in Motorola's radios which encouraged the company to mass-produce the first crystals used in wrist watches.^[8]

Cellular Business Systems

[edit]

Dyna LLC

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Cooper and his wife Arlene Harris founded Dyna LLC in 1986 as a home base for their developmental and support activities for the new companies, Subscriber Computing Inc., Cellular Pay Phone, Inc. (CPPI), SOS Wireless Communications and Accessible Wireless; the later two of which together created the underpinning for the creation of GreatCall, were all launched from Dyna LLC.

From his Dyna headquarters Cooper continues to write and lecture about wireless communications, technological innovation, the Internet and R&D management. He serves on industry, civic and national governmental groups including the U.S. Department of Commerce Spectrum Advisory Committee that advises the Secretary of Commerce of the United States on spectrum policy and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Technological Advisory Council.

GreatCall, Inc

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In 1986 Cooper co-founded Cellular Payphone Inc. (CPPI), the parent company of GreatCall, Inc., Innovator of the Jitterbug cell phone (in partnership with Samsung).^[23] GreatCall is the first complete end-to-end value-added service provider in the cellular industry to focus on simplicity with its primary emphasis on senior citizens.

Arraycomm

[edit]

In 1992 Cooper co-founded Arraycomm a developer of software for mobile antenna technologies. Under his leadership, the Company grew from a seed-funded startup in San Jose, California, into the world leader in smart antenna technology with 400 patents issued or pending, worldwide.^[24]

Energous.com

[edit]

Cooper joined the board of directors from 2015 to 2019.

Cooper's law

[edit]

Cooper found that the ability to transmit different radio communications simultaneously and in the same place has grown at the same pace since Guglielmo Marconi's first transmissions in 1895. This led Cooper to formulate the Law of Spectral Efficiency, otherwise known as Cooper's Law. The law states that the maximum number of voice conversations or equivalent data transactions that can be conducted in all of the useful radio spectrum over a given area doubles every 30 months.^[8]^[24]

Publications

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Latest publications

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"The Myth of Spectrum Scarcity" Position Paper, March 2010.

"Mobile WiMax – Fourth-Generation Wireless," Bechtel Communications Technical Journal, September 2007.

"The Need for Simplicity," in the anthology "Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change," published by Stanford University in 2007.

"Personal Communications in 2025" for Eta Kappa Nu Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society, Autumn 2005.

"Antennas Get Smart" in Scientific American, July 2003.

"Everyone is Wrong" in Technology Review, June 2001.^[25]

Awards and affiliations

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Mensa^[26]
1984 – IEEE Centennial Medal and Fellow
1995 – Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award
1996 – Radio Club of America Fred Link Award and Life Fellow with the International Engineering Consortium
2000 – "Red Herring" Magazine Top Ten Entrepreneurs of 2000
2000 – RCR Wireless News Wireless Hall of Fame Inaugural Member
2002 – American Computer Museum George Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Award^[27]
2002 – Wireless Systems Design Industry Leader Award
2006 – CITA Emerging Technologies Award
2007 – Wireless World Research Forum Fellow
2007 – Global Spec Great Moments Engineering Award
2008 – CE Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame Award
October 2008 – Top U.S. Wireless Innovators of All Time.
2009 – Prince of Asturias Award for scientific and technical research.^[28]
2009 – Life Trustee, Illinois Institute of Technology
2010 – Radio Club of America, Lifetime Achievement Award^[29]
October 2010 – Member, National Academy of Engineering
2011 – Inaugural Mikhail Gorbachev: The Man Who Changed the World Awards Nominee
2011 – Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement^[30]
2012 – Washington Society of Engineers, Washington Award^[31]
2013 – Charles Stark Draper Prize, National Academy of Engineering^[32]
2013 – Marconi Prize^[33]^[34]
2013 – Honorary doctorate awarded by the students and the rector of Hasselt University on the occasion of the university's 40th anniversary.^[35]
2014 IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu Eminent Member [2]
2019 – Leaves the Energous board of directors.
2025 - Recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.^[36]

References

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^ [1] ITU 150 Awards
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2008. encyclopedia.com
^ Companies Try to Create Room on Radio Spectrum, The New York Times, July 6, 2012
^ ^a ^b ^c 38 years ago he made the first cell phone call, CNN. April 3, 2011
^ 50 years ago, Martin Cooper made the first cellphone call
^ ^a ^b ^c A Chat With the Man Behind the Mobiles, BBC, April 21, 2003
^ ^a ^b Meet Marty Cooper, the Inventor of the Mobile Phone, BBC, April 23, 2010
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Father of the Cell Phone, Economist, June 4, 2009
^ The Cell Phone: Marty Coop's Big Idea, CBS News 60 Minutes, June 11, 2010
^ Wireless Hall of Fame – Arlene Harris, RCR Wireless, May 26, 2007
^ Carriers Warn of Crisis in Mobile Spectrum, The New York Times, April 17, 2012
^ "Jews of the Week: Martin Cooper and Joel Engel | Jew of the Week". December 14, 2011.
^ "April 3: The First Cell Phone Call". Jewish Currents. Archived from the original on December 10, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2019.
^ "Jewish-American Hall of Fame – Nominate Somebody". amuseum.org.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Oehmke, Ted (January 6, 2000) Cell Phone Ruin the Opera? Meet the Culprit, The New York Times
^ Reed, Brad (May 9, 2011) Meet the guy who made the first cellphone call 40 years ago today, Network World.
^ Best Inventions of 2007, Time.
^ Inventor of the Cell Phone Says No to AT&T-Mobile, Yes to Apps, and More, PC Magazine, April 15, 2011
^ ^a ^b Inventor of Cell Phone: We Knew Someday Everybody Would Have One, CNN, July 9, 2010
^ Cooper, Martin et al. "All Signaling" U.S. patent 3,906,166, Issued September 1, 1975
^ ^a ^b April 3, 1973: Motorola Calls AT&T...by Cell, Wired, April 3, 2008
^ Twitter, Telegram and Email: Famous First Lines, BBC News, March 21, 2011
^ Cooper's Calling, ITP Net, April 21, 2010
^ ^a ^b Antennas Get Smart, Scientific American, June 9, 2003
^ Review, Technology. "Everyone Is Wrong". MIT Technology Review.
^ "They're Accomplished, They're Famous, and They're MENSANS". Mensa Bulletin (476). American Mensa: 25. July 2004. ISSN 0025-9543.
^ "2002 Honoree - for cellphone". American Computer and Robotics Museum. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
^ "The fathers of the mobile phone and email, Prince of Asturias Award Laureates for Technical and Scientific Research" (Press release). Fundación Príncipe de Asturias. June 17, 2009. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved June 17, 2009.
^ "Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients". Radio Club of America. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
^ "Webby Lifetime Achievement - Martin Cooper". Webby Awards. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
^ "Washington Award Recipients". The Washington Award. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
^ "Martin Cooper". NAE Website. June 30, 2023. Retrieved January 6, 2025.
^ "Martin Cooper – Marconi Society". October 26, 2013.
^ "Martin Cooper - Marconi Award 2013".^{[permanent dead link]}
^ Academische Openingszitting 2013–2014 Archived May 24, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. uhasselt.be. September 27, 2013
^ The White House (January 3, 2025). "President Biden Honors Nation's Leading Scientists, Technologists, and Innovators". The White House. Retrieved January 4, 2025.

External links

[edit]

Media related to Martin Cooper at Wikimedia Commons

Marty Cooper interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
MartyMobile on Twitter

v t e Charles Stark Draper Prize recipients
1980s	Jack Kilby / Robert Noyce (1989)
1990s	Frank Whittle / Hans von Ohain (1991) John Backus (1993) John R. Pierce / Harold A. Rosen (1995) Vladimir Haensel (1997) Charles K. Kao / Robert D. Maurer / John B. MacChesney (1999)
2000s	Vinton Cerf / Bob Kahn / Leonard Kleinrock / Lawrence G. Roberts (2001) Robert Langer (2002) Ivan Getting / Bradford Parkinson (2003) Alan Kay / Butler Lampson / Robert Taylor / Charles P. Thacker (2004) Minoru S. Araki / Francis J. Madden / Edward A. Miller / James W. Plummer / Don H. Schoessler (2005) Willard Boyle / George E. Smith (2006) Tim Berners-Lee (2007) Rudolf E. Kálmán (2008) Robert H. Dennard (2009)
2010s	Frances Arnold / Willem P. C. Stemmer (2011) George H. Heilmeier / Wolfgang Helfrich / Martin Schadt / T. Peter Brody (2012) Thomas Haug / Martin Cooper / Yoshihisa Okumura / Richard H. Frenkiel / Joel S. Engel (2013) John B. Goodenough / Yoshio Nishi / Rachid Yazami / Akira Yoshino (2014) Isamu Akasaki / George Craford / Russell Dupuis / Nick Holonyak / Shuji Nakamura (2015) Andrew Viterbi (2016) Bjarne Stroustrup (2018)
2020s	Jean Fréchet / C. Grant Willson (2020) Steve Furber / John L. Hennessy / David Patterson / Sophie Wilson (2022)

Laureates of the Prince or Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

1981: Alberto Sols
1982: Manuel Ballester
1983: Luis Antonio Santaló Sors
1984: Antonio Garcia-Bellido
1985: David Vázquez Martínez and Emilio Rosenblueth
1986: Antonio González González
1987: Jacinto Convit and Pablo Rudomín
1988: Manuel Cardona and Marcos Moshinsky
1989: Guido Münch
1990: Santiago Grisolía and Salvador Moncada
1991: Francisco Bolívar Zapata
1992: Federico García Moliner
1993: Amable Liñán
1994: Manuel Patarroyo
1995: Manuel Losada Villasante and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad of Costa Rica
1996: Valentín Fuster
1997: Atapuerca research team
1998: Emilio Méndez Pérez and Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar
1999: Ricardo Miledi and Enrique Moreno González
2000: Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier
2001: Craig Venter, John Sulston, Francis Collins, Hamilton Smith, and Jean Weissenbach
2002: Lawrence Roberts, Robert E. Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and Tim Berners-Lee
2003: Jane Goodall
2004: Judah Folkman, Tony Hunter, Joan Massagué, Bert Vogelstein, and Robert Weinberg
2005: Antonio Damasio
2006: Juan Ignacio Cirac
2007: Peter Lawrence and Ginés Morata
2008: Sumio Iijima, Shuji Nakamura, Robert Langer, George M. Whitesides, and Tobin Marks
2009: Martin Cooper and Raymond Tomlinson
2010: David Julius, Baruch Minke, and Linda Watkins
2011: Joseph Altman, Arturo Álvarez-Buylla, and Giacomo Rizzolatti
2012: Gregory Winter and Richard A. Lerner
2013: Peter Higgs, François Englert, and European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN
2014: Avelino Corma Canós, Mark E. Davis, and Galen D. Stucky

Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna
2016: Hugh Herr
2017: Rainer Weiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration
2018: Svante Pääbo
2019: Joanne Chory and Sandra Myrna Díaz
2020: Yves Meyer, Ingrid Daubechies, Terence Tao, and Emmanuel Candès
2021: Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi, and Sarah Gilbert
2022: Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Demis Hassabis
2023: Jeffrey I. Gordon, Everett Peter Greenberg, and Bonnie Bassler
2024: Daniel J. Drucker, Jeffrey M. Friedman, Joel F. Habener, Jens Juul Holst, and Svetlana Mojsov

81127589 call history

Martin Cooper (inventor)

Martin Cooper (inventor)