{"id":69,"date":"2021-12-10T21:07:50","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T02:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2023-10-27T21:08:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T01:08:04","slug":"how-the-cellphone-was-born-three-months-of-craziness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/10\/how-the-cellphone-was-born-three-months-of-craziness\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Cellphone was Born: Three Months of Craziness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Season 1 \u2022\u00a0Episode 8<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the early 1970s, \u201cmobile phones\u201d were car phones: Permanently installed monstrosities that filled up your trunk with boxes and, in a given city, could handle only 20 calls at a time. Nobody imagined that there\u2019d be a market for handheld, pocketable cellphones; the big phone companies thought the idea was idiotic. But Marty Cooper, now 92, saw a different future for cellular technology\u2014and he had 90 days to make it work. A story of corporate rivalry, Presidential interference\u2026and unquenchable optimism.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Guests: Marty Cooper, father of the cellphone. Arlene Cooper, technology entrepreneur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Marty Cooper Cell Phone Inventor&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Theme begins.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Marty Cooper dreamed up the idea for an invention called a&nbsp;<em>cellphone&nbsp;<\/em>in 1973, it wasn\u2019t a popular idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: You\u2019re telling me people thought that the cell phone was a dumb idea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Absolutely. No\u2013 (LAUGH) no question about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, at 92, Marty Cooper considers today\u2019s cellphone only the crudest precursor of what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Oh, David, we have\u2013 are only at the very, very beginning. We are going to revolutionize mankind in many ways.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m David Pogue, and this is \u201cUnsung Science.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>BREAK<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Season 1, Episode 8: How the Cellphone Was Invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, unfortunately, I don\u2019t have some great chronology milestone to justify why we\u2019re doing this topic now. This isn\u2019t, like, the 50<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;anniversary of the cellphone\u2014it\u2019s only the 48<sup>th<\/sup>. It\u2019s not the 100<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;birthday of the guy who invented it\u2014he\u2019s only 92.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I&nbsp;<em>do&nbsp;<\/em>have one little news hook: That inventor, Marty Cooper, has just published his memoir. It\u2019s called \u201cCutting the Cord,\u201d which is a title he hates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: (LAUGH) You don\u2019t like the title?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, it turns out it was not original. And several other people used it. I didn\u2019t know that at the time. I\u2019d like to think I\u2019m a good amateur marketer. But I didn\u2019t\u2013 I\u2019m not a good book marketer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other reason for dedicating an episode of \u201cUnsung Science\u201d \u2014which is a title I&nbsp;<em>love,&nbsp;<\/em>by the way\u2014is that Marty is an exceptionally cool, smart, funny, humble, thoughtful dude. This world can always use more Marty Cooper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let\u2019s begin at the beginning: Marty\u2019s childhood in Chicago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: When you were a little kid, did any of the signs of your current personality exhibit themselves?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: I spent a lot of time alone when I was a child. My folks actually had a grocery store at that time in their lives. And, of course, they both had to work\u2013 at this thing. So I spent time alone and became a very avid reader. And even at the age of eight or nine years old, I thought automobiles were wonderful. I just loved the\u2013 I knew every model, year, and every feature on every car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I ended up going to what they called a technical school. \/ I think they would call it a trade school now. And yet I got a very good education in liberal arts, and at the same time took a shop every year, woodshop\u2013 metal shop, forge, foundry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I\u2013 I can\u2019t tell you how valuable those kinds of things were. I still get a thrill out of fixing things. When I fix an appliance or program the lights in the house, I get instant gratification.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When he was about 18, he found out that the U.S. Navy was offering a fantastic deal. They\u2019d pay for college tuition, books, and incidental expenses\u2014if Marty would agree to spend three summers with the Navy, and then three years after graduation. He loved the experience. \u201cMy time in the military taught me about leadership, responsibility, and getting along with people,\u201d he writes in his book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those traits came in handy a few years later, when he was an executive at Motorola, the leading maker of two-way radios for police, taxi companies, and the military. Its bread and butter was car phones.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So these\u2013 these car telephones were not&nbsp;<em>cellular<\/em>&nbsp;car telephones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: That\u2019s correct.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were literally two-way radios. Asynchronous audio, in other words. You couldn\u2019t talk at the same time. Like, you\u2019d say, \u201cHi, honey\u2014I\u2019ll be home late, over.\u201d And honey would say, \u201cI\u2019ll start dinner without you, over.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were also not what you\u2019d call&nbsp;<em>mobile<\/em>&nbsp;phones\u2014apart from, you know, being part of your car. The car phone\u2019s electronics fit into what looked like three big suitcases; they had to be wired into your trunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Weighed 30 pounds. And there was a huge cable about this big around that went from the trunk to the front, and then there was a con\u2013 what we call a control head\u2013 with the dial and the stuff. And then there was a speaker off in a corner, and there was a microphone coming off. So the\u2013 just the installation of this thing alone was\u2013 a major job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there was a bigger problem with car phones: Calling capacity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: They had one transmitter in a city, and\u2013 and a very limited amount of radio channels. And so you could only serve so many people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you tried to make a phone call during the middle of the day, you could never get an operator. The chances were\u2013 one in 20 that you could make a phone call, that\u2019s how bad that\u2013 service was with the car telephones. It really was not a mass\u2013 product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, the cellular network is quite different. Today, we\u2019ve got cellular antenna clusters, known as cell sites, on towers all over the U.S.\u2014over 415,000 of them. Your call gets handed off from one cell site to another as you move around\u2014a system that drastically increases the number of calls that can be going on simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An engineer at Bell Labs had dreamed up this idea way back in 1947. Whereupon it had been promptly forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: And they put this idea in the drawer and somebody 22 years later pulled it out of the drawer and said, \u201cHey, maybe we should\u2013 execute this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cut to 1969. Bell Labs is now the research division of AT&amp;T. AT&amp;T wants to expand its carphone business\u2014and get around that awful capacity problem. So it dusts off the cellular proposal and approaches the government about getting a monopoly on this new technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: They went to the FCC and said, \u201cWe want to continue our monopoly in telephones.\u201d So they concluded that they were gonna build this new system\u2013 that they called cellular. And I was at Motorola at the time, and we objected to both of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a\u2013 Bell system was gonna come along and they were gonna take over our business as well as this whole new thing, and do it wrong. Do (LAUGH) it with\u2013 with car telephones!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People had been\u2013 had been wired to their desks in their kitchens for over 100 years. And now they\u2019re gonna wire us to our cars where we spend 5% of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Motorola was really worried. If the FCC gave AT&amp;T an exclusive on the cellular airwaves, that would be the end of Motorola\u2019s primary business. The company desperately wanted the FCC to open up cellular to competition\u2014not to give AT&amp;T a monopoly. I should point out that at the time, AT&amp;T was the world\u2019s biggest corporation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty Cooper wanted to show the FCC the kind of potential that cellular might have&nbsp;<em>beyond&nbsp;<\/em>car phones\u2014if there were competition in the marketplace. As he saw it, these phones could one day be battery-powered, and fit in your&nbsp;<em>pocket!&nbsp;<\/em>You could carry it around with you! RADICAL!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So you were proposing, back in 1973, that\u2013 s\u2013 cell phones should be completely untethered, not part of a car, but in your pocket. Why wasn\u2019t everyone saying, \u201cThat\u2019s the greatest idea I\u2019ve ever heard. We\u2019ll sell hundreds of billions\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: It turns out that people are not very good at predicting th\u2013 the future, in general.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Y\u2013 you\u2019re telling me people thought that the cell phone was a dumb idea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Absolutely. No\u2013 (LAUGH) no question about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Well, I guess it takes a dreamer-slash-executive to bring it about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, when you think about it, at the time, the internet hadn\u2019t been invented yet. There were no digital cameras. The large scale integrated circuit hadn\u2019t been created. The lithium ion battery had not been created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the idea that you could put all these things together in a box\/you really had to\u2013 have a little bit of imagination.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\ufeffThere\u2019s a great quote by Joel Engel, the engineer who ran the Bell Labs car phone program\u2014basically, Marty Cooper\u2019s arch-rival. Engel said in 2007, \u201cNone of us\u2014the FCC, Motorola, AT&amp;T, anybody at that time in the 70s, did not anticipate these things. We thought the business was going to be purely business usage\u2014real estate agents, home repair, people who were in their vehicle a lot. We didn\u2019t anticipate teenage kids using cellular phones. We didn\u2019t anticipate personal residential use. We also didn\u2019t anticipate they\u2019d be handheld pocket-sized units. We completely missed the individual usage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Given that mindset, how could Motorola possibly convince the FCC that a pocket phone could be a thing\u2014if the FCC would just open up the airwaves to competition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: So I thought about, \u201cHow could we do a dazzling demonstration?\u201d The only way to do it is to have a working something. \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty decided that the most direct way to spark the FCC\u2019s imagination\u2014was to&nbsp;<em>build<\/em>&nbsp;an actual working cellphone, thereby leaving&nbsp;<em>nothing&nbsp;<\/em>to the FCC\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was only one problem: The FCC hearing about AT&amp;T\u2019s petition was only three months away. Marty began tearing around Motorola, from one department to another, to build this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: And the first guy that I went to was not the engineers, it was the industrial designer, Rudy Krolapp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I told Rudy, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna make a cellular phone.\u201d (LAUGH) And his reaction was, \u201cWhat\u2019s a cellular phone?\u201d So I\u2013 and I described that to him, and he stopped working on anything else. He took his whole team of people and assigned them to conceive of what a handheld personal phone might look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: You actually figured out what it would look like before you had what would go into it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Isn\u2019t that backwards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Th\u2013 well, it\u2013 that\u2019s what this was. We were tryin\u2019 to get people excited about this thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019ve probably seen pictures of the winning design. It\u2019s this rectangular beige block, like a Soviet Army field telephone or something. Or, as Marty says, like a shoe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: The phone that we ended up picking was the simplest one. Looked like a shoe, but it was one piece. We knew if we made something with l\u2013 with\u2013 complications, it would break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The thing is, the original design was&nbsp;<em>tiny!&nbsp;<\/em>I got to handle the original model that the designers gave Marty\u2014it\u2019s like five inches tall! Like they\u2019d taken the one you\u2019ve seen in pictures and blasted it with a shrink ray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: W\u2013 wait a minute. This isn\u2019t a miniature, this is what they actually had in mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: That\u2019s exactly right. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: It\u2019s a tenth the size of the final one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah, well, that\u2019s\u2013 the reason for the increase in size is exactly here.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He showed me a huge glob of circuit boards and wiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So they had to fit all this stuff into\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Of this phone<s>.&nbsp;<\/s>this is everything in the phone except the battery.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So the designers\u2013proposed this. And by the time you put all that stuff in, it wound up\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: It grew to this size. (LAUGH)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that Marty had the shell, Moto engineers had to design the guts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: They assigned their top engineer, who is a fellow named Don Linder.&nbsp; and\u2013 Don says\u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t think that can be done. (LAUGH) And certainly not in three months.\u201d And I persuaded him to try. I used\u2013 my management style, which was different. In other words, I gave him a big hug. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We gave him carte blanche, as many people as he wanted to get. There was a crew of 20 people working on this device.&nbsp; I was his go-fer. He needed a piece of technology, a new filter, a new integrated circuit, and I was running around the corporation. I knew where everything was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And these guys did it. In three months, they actually demonstrated a working unit. It was just wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: And what kind of battery life did the phone get?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: You could talk for 25 minutes (LAUGH) before the\u2013 before the phone ran down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty Cooper also made history by making the first public cellphone&nbsp;<em>call.&nbsp;<\/em>It was April 3<sup>rd<\/sup>, 1973. It was a PR stunt. One of the network morning shows was supposed to film this big moment on the streets of New York, but wound up canceling at the last minute. (These morning TV people, you know? Jeez!)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: So our PR people were\u2013 h\u2013 in deep trouble. They just scrounged around. They told me that they had this replacement.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we met this guy on Sixth Avenue in New York, in front of the Hilton.&nbsp; I thought, \u201cYou know, I\u2019m gonna call my counterpart in the Bell system.\u201d And I looked up the number of Joel Engel, who ran the Bell system car telephone program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: This is your arch rival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah, he was. (LAUGH) He\u2019s still not very fond of me, by the way. And I said\u2013 \u201cHi, Joel, it\u2019s Marty Cooper.\u201d He said, \u201cHi, Marty.\u201d Very polite. And I said\u2013 \u201cJoel, I\u2019m calling you on a cell phone, but a real cell phone, a personal, handheld portable cell phone.\u201d Silence on the other end of the line.&nbsp; Joel does not remember that conversation to this day. And I\u2013 I guess I don\u2019t blame him. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Well, I mean, you were rubbing your heel in his face, in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah. Well, I\u2013 he deserved it. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few weeks later, Marty gave a similar demo to the FCC commissioners. They rode in a Motorola van, making cellphone calls as they drove around Washington\u2014and their calls never dropped! That\u2019s because Motorola had installed three cell towers around the city, and carefully mapped out a route that would always remain within their range.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So? Did it work? Did Marty Cooper\u2019s crazy gambit of creating one single working cellphone convince the U.S. government not to give AT&amp;T a monopoly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As if you didn\u2019t know!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the break\u2014I\u2019ll give you the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>BREAK<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the break, I was telling you how Marty Cooper ran around Motorola, getting buy-in from the various departments, to produce a working cellphone in three months. The idea was to convince the FCC to open the cellular airwaves to competition\u2014to prove that competition leads to innovation. And above all,&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;<\/em>to give AT&amp;T an exclusive on this new tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>OK\u2014and now, finally, the big punch line. Did Motorola\u2019s stunt work? Did the working cellphone prototype convince the FCC? Here\u2019s Marty Cooper again.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: When the FCC finally made their decision they actually allowed half of the telephones to be built by the Bell system. And this other half to be done by independent operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So you did all this for the benefit of Motorola, your employer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: But as a side benefit, you opened up the entire world of cell phones to the marketplace. You ensured that it wouldn\u2019t be an AT&amp;T\/Bell Labs monopoly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, that\u2019s right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the cellphone era didn\u2019t exactly get under way immediately.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: It took over ten years to get the technology right and get the FCC to decide who was gonna provide the service. So the first actual service didn\u2019t happen until October of 1983, ten years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At one point during that decade of waiting, Motorola\u2019s DynaTAC phone was ready to go\u2014but the FCC was still dithering over how to regulate the new industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Motorola founder Bob Galvin went straight to the top\u2014he showed the working phone to the Vice President. Of the United States. George H. W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: And Bush called his wife. And he\u2013 and he said to Bob, \u201cYou know, Ron\u2019s gonna look at this.\u201d (LAUGH) And the next thing you know, everyone\u2019s there in the office with Ronald Reagan. And Re\u2013 and Reagan called Nancy. (LAUGH) and he says to\u2013 George, \u201cGeorge\u2013 why don\u2019t we&nbsp;<em>have<\/em>&nbsp;this?\u201d And George says, \u201cWell, the FCC is kinda dragging.\u201d He says, \u201cWould you call them and tell them to get this thing on the road?\u201d (LAUGH) And within a couple of months they (LAUGH) made a decision, but it took that kind of a thing to\u2013 to make it actually\u2013 happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And presto: In 1983, you could buy an actual, portable, battery-powered, wireless, pocketable cellphone \u2014well,&nbsp;<em>coat-<\/em>pocketable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: They cost $4,000 in 1983 dollars, which would be like having a $10,000 cell phone today. So there were not a lot of sales, but they were sold. With time, as the system developed, within ten years, you couldn\u2019t buy a car telephone anymore. All the phones were now handheld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are more phones\u2013 more cell phones in the world today than there are people. Two-thirds of people on Earth have cell phones. That\u2019s an amazing number.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Did you get fantastically wealthy from inventing the cell phone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: No. Why, as a matter of fact\u2013 when I joined Motorola in 1954,&nbsp; I assigned to Motorola all the intellectual property that I might come up with, all the inventions, ideas to Motorola for $1. And, David, that was the best deal I ever did in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Best deal?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: I\u2013 it was. Motorola treated me wonderfully. And\u2013 they allowed me to have a productive career, and I have been thankful to the\u2013 the\u2013 all of the managers and people\u2013 at Motorola who propagated that environment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I should mention that I was talking to Marty at his home in Del Mar, California\u2014an absolutely gorgeous house&nbsp;<em>directly&nbsp;<\/em>on the beach. Bill Gates has a home a few doors down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty\u2019s something of a fitness nut\u2014even at 92, he does weights three times a week, and often walks along this beach, where we chatted about his book\u2014and his movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: So I understand that your book has been optioned for the movies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah, it has by a guy named Dana Brunetti, who did the\u2013 the&nbsp;<em>House of Cards<\/em>. And\u2013 and he did&nbsp;<em>The\u2013 Social Network<\/em>movie\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Well, who\u2019s gonna play you in the movie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: I was hoping that you would do it, David. (LAUGH) You\u2013 you\u2013 you\u2019re the only star that I know. So\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: I could be persuaded. (LAUGHTER)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: You would\u2013 you wouldn\u2019t do it as a privilege (LAUGH) to play me? I thought that at least you could do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Have your people talk to my people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah, right. (LAUGHTER)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, the point is, despite signing away all his intellectual rights to Motorola for a dollar, Marty is not exactly hurting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: (LAUGH)&nbsp; So if I can ask, so the\u2013 the\u2013 the beauty and the beachfront house\u2026 is this from your subsequent businesses, the income?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Yeah. Well, I was lucky enough to get hooked up with a wonderful woman, and we\u2019ve created a partnership. And we\u2019ve been starting businesses<s>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/s>We\u2019ve had some failures over the way, but we\u2019ve had enough successes. So the world has treated us very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019d be Marty\u2019s second wife, Arlene Harris, a technology innovator in her own right. Marty left Motorola in 1983, and married Arlene in 1991. Together, they\u2019ve founded a string of companies in the cellular industry.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ARLENE: And so I met Marty at a conference in Carmel\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ARLENE: \u2013in 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: At which I was speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ARLENE: He was speaking. He was a bigwig coming in from Motorola, Chicago. You know, the\u2013 the\u2013 the guy that everybody sort of had big eyes about. And he came in and told us his prognostications about what cellular was gonna be, it was an inspirational talk.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Were you starstruck? &nbsp; Were you impressed by his intellect at his talk?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: I can\u2019t speak for Arlene, but I was star struck (LAUGH) with Arlene. We\u2013 we\u2013 c\u2013 started out with a minor conversation in the bar.&nbsp; And that conversation has been going on for 42 years, still going on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Isn\u2019t the general advice for relationships not to work with your spouse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: \u2013we don\u2019t agree about\u2013 everything. But\u2013 you know, that\u2019s the spice of life is disagreement, as long as your\u2013 if it\u2019s friendly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: (LAUGH) But it seems like, if there\u2019s a technological dispute, can\u2019t you just go, \u201cI\u2019ll have you know I\u2019m the father of the cell phone.\u201d Wouldn\u2019t you automatically win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ARLENE: No. (LAUGHTER)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of their companies created the Jitterbug phone, designed for seniors, now owned by Best Buy. My dad used a Jitterbug phone for awhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ARLENE: The whole idea was to simplify it.&nbsp; Big buttons and a screen that had larger fonts. It was just a&nbsp; phone was a phone and nothing else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: With the Jitterbug phone, you would open the flip. And if you had a dial tone, you had a signal. And if you didn\u2019t\u2013, you didn\u2019t. That was an example of simplicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Marty Cooper seems like an affable, easy going guy. You might not immediately think of him as a rabble-rouser, a guy who throws bombs at the establishment. But he\u2019s got one opinion that infuriates the executives and lobbyists for quite a few billion-dollar corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: The myth is that radio frequencies are like beachfront property: Once you use it up, it\u2019s gone. Total myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Wai\u2013 wait, wait, wait, wait, (LAUGH) wait, wait, wait. You\u2019re talkin\u2019 about spectrum. We hear about the FCC auctioning off blocks of frequencies called spectrum auctions, right? And\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: For billions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Right because nature only gave us a fixed number of frequencies, and everybody wants \u2018em. Radio, and television, and cellular, and the military, they\u2019re all fighting over these limited, finite number of spectrum bands. We all know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: politicians know that. (LAUGH) But we engineers know that, when Marconi started out, here w\u2013 did the first commercial radio. \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was the beginning. And he used up 100% of the radio spectrum doing that. And then the engineers came along and they figured out how you could have two people on Earth talking at the same time. And keep increasing that number. And then different technologies for squeezing more bits of information, more voice, into less and less spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:36:22&nbsp; And we\u2019ve been doing that to the extent of we have doubled the capacity of this radio spectrum that we\u2019ve been talking about, \/ We have \/ doubled it every 30 months for 120 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: What?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: it actually is ten trillion times increase in capacity between Marc\u2013 what Marconi did, and where\u2013 what we\u2019re doing today. Part of it is that we\u2019ve been going higher and higher and higher in frequency, that\u2019s a very small part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s \u2014we just have learned how to be much more efficient.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Marty, I have been a technology reporter for 30 years and the fact that spectrum is precious and limited is\u2013 it\u2019s been a given. Like, we know this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, you can see why I am ridiculed by most of society. (LAUGH) But the people that understand do subscribe to what I see.&nbsp; they call the law of spectrum capacity Cooper\u2019s Law.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Is it something like Moore\u2019s Law?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: It\u2019s exactly the same as Moore\u2019s Law and the basis of it is that we\u2019re so inefficient now that we have lots and lots of room to grow.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the law of\u2013 of spectrum capacity, we\u2019re only in the beginning. We\u2013 we can go a trillion times more in capacity by just using radio\u2013 and\u2013 computing technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: I guess we haven\u2019t run out of it yet. That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: You know, you are so smart. Now I know (LAUGH) why you make all the big bucks, David. We\u2019ve never run out. We keep increasing the number of people that are benefiting\u2013 from this by orders of magnitude. And yet, we still don\u2019t run out of spectrum.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty is confident that the legend of limited radio frequencies is a charade\u2014that new technologies will always let us keep ahead of demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: And I\u2019ll give you another example. W\u2013 the towers that you\u2013 we\u2019ve been talking about are all outside. Guess where most of our phone calls are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Inside. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: And we\u2013 so we put out huge amounts of energy to penetrate our houses and buildings. In the future, we\u2019re gonna be putting the cell sites in the buildings, little tiny cell sites.&nbsp; But at some point, all these things are gonna be connected to each other\u2013 and much, much more efficient and much lower cost. And it turns out that there will an infinite amount of radio spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marty does a lot of that\u2026you know, thinking about the future.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: one of the most surprising things you wrote in your book to me was that we are only at the dawn of the cell phone?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Oh, David, we have\u2013 are only at the very, very beginning. There are\u2013 we are going to revolutionize mankind in many ways. \/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We now know that we can put a device in your ear or on your earlobe, under your skin, that has a computer in it. And you can call it, I can talk to that computer. And I\u2019ll call my computer Sam and I\u2019ll say, \u201cHey, Sam, get\u2013 David on the phone for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when we talk about health care, you will have sensors on your body, maybe under your skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when fluid starts accumulating in your lungs, if that ever happens, that is a\u2013 the\u2013 precursor of a heart attack. If you know you\u2019re gonna have a heart attack, you can stop it. Just think about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>having what we call a cell phone now can eliminate congestive heart failure, which is like the third\u2013 highest cause of death\u2013 in people. And that\u2013 technology exists today.&nbsp; It\u2019s not in the future.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ultimately it will be able to sense a few s\u2013 cancer cells. And as soon as those cancer cells appear to be getting out of control, you go to the hospital, go to a doctor, or someday you\u2019ll be able to do it yourself. Zap the cells, cancer is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: I mean, you\u2019re talking about implanting technology in our bodies. I would normally say, \u201cCome on, dude. That\u2019s absurd.\u201d The only problem is you\u2019ve been right before. (LAUGH)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, we do that all the time. Pacemakers we do that. Reckon that now that\u2019s gotten to be\u2013 a very routine kinda something.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that\u2019s just healthcare. Once everybody has a cellphone&nbsp;<em>and&nbsp;<\/em>internet access, there\u2019ll be many, many more aspects of life that can improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: I believe that the whole process of education is going to be revolutionized. That having access to the internet, the\u2013 role of a teacher is going to change. Teachers are not gonna be just communicating information. Kids can do that for themselves. The teacher will be\u2013 advising people, teaching them how to use the tools.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know I sound like an optimist. But poverty is going to be a thing of the past. There is no reason for anybody in today\u2019s society to be poor.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\u2013 the United Nations determined that, in Africa alone\u2013 over a period of 20 years, 1.2 billion people moved out of severe poverty largely because of the cell phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: What\u2019s the mechanism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: The mechanism was these people\u2013 poor people have no way to deal with money. They c\u2013 have no way to save money, they have no way to transfer money from one place to another. And people came along and invented\u2013 there was a system called M-Pesa where you didn\u2019t need a bank to save money or to move money from one place to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2013 this has stimulated entrepreneurism. Just that fact just moved\u2013over a billion people out of poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were people\u2013 who\u2013 would loan money to a woman in a village in India so she could buy a cell phone which she would rent out to the local farmers, or the local fishermen. And they could call the neighboring villages and find out where there was a market\u2013 and increase their efficiency. Those are the real indicators what the future of the cell phone is and\u2013 and the way the cell phone is\u2013 is helping society. It is making us more efficient, more productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>POGUE: Here\u2019s what I find strange, Marty.&nbsp; I know this is a stereotype, but as a 92-year-old guy, I might expect you to relish the stories from the past more than the s\u2013 the stories of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MARTY: Well, my story of the past is that I have observed that things in the past have continued to improve. But if you examine every metric that exists today, we are better off today than we have been in the past.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People are\u2013 are richer today. They are healthier today. There is more freedom today. There is more tolerance today than there has ever been before. We\u2019ve still got a lot of problems\u2013 but there\u2019s no reason to think that we aren\u2019t gonna keep improving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>UNSUNG SCIENCE with David Pogue is presented by Simon &amp; Schuster and CBS News, and produced by PRX Productions.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Executive Producers for Simon &amp; Schuster are Richard Rhorer and Chris Lynch.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The PRX production team is Jocelyn Gonzales, Morgan Flannery, Claire Carlander, Pedro Rafael Rosado and the project manager is Ian Fox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesi Nelson composed the Unsung Science theme music, and fact checker&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:kristina.rebelo@gmail.com\">Kristina Rebelo<\/a>&nbsp;positioned herself nobly between my scripts and certain humiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For more on Unsung Science episodes, visit unsungscience.com. Go to my website at<a href=\"https:\/\/davidpogue.com\/\">&nbsp;David Pogue.com<\/a>&nbsp;or follow me: @Pogue on your social media platform of choice. Be sure to like and subscribe to Unsung Science wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6079\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-69-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3\">https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/?powerpress_pinw=69-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"unsungscience-20211210.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1970s, \u201cmobile phones\u201d were car phones: Permanently installed monstrosities that filled up your trunk with boxes and, in a given city, could handle only 20 calls at a time. Nobody imagined that there\u2019d be a market for handheld, pocketable cellphones; the big phone companies thought the idea was idiotic. But Marty Cooper, now 92, saw a different future for cellular technology\u2014and he had 90 days to make it work.<span class=\"excerpt-more-link\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/10\/how-the-cellphone-was-born-three-months-of-craziness\/\">More <svg class=\"svg-icon\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" aria-hidden=\"true\" role=\"img\" focusable=\"false\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M6.96954 10.2804L11.9999 15.3107L17.0302 10.2804L15.9695 9.21973L11.9999 13.1894L8.0302 9.21973L6.96954 10.2804Z\" fill=\"currentColor\"\/><\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"excerpt-audio-block\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211210.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}