Marty Cooper, who made the first mobile phone call in 1973, says modern devices are 'suboptimal'.
Technology editor
Mr Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, rang his counterpart at rival firm Bell Laboratories, to triumphantly tell him he was calling from "a personal, handheld, portable cell phone"."I think he was gritting his teeth," says the 94-year-old, laughing. The basics of how that first call worked haven't changed much. The phone converts your voice into an electric signal, which modulates a radio wave. The radio wave goes to a mast; the mast sends your voice to the person you are calling, and by reversing the process, that person can then hear you speak.Today's mobile phones, however, are unrecognisable when compared with that early Motorola model.
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