ASTANA. KAZINFORM – Exactly 50 years ago, on April 3, 1973, the first call was made from a mobile phone, Kazinform correspondent reports.
It is known from history that on this very day, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile call to his competitor Joel Engel of AT&T Bell Labs, a company that develops telephones, saying that he was calling from a real cell phone.
By the way, it was AT&T Bell Labs that came up with the idea to use cellular communications back in 1946. The same company was the first to develop car radiotelephones for installation in cars. But Motorola managed to create the first mobile communication device.
The first Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone could not be called a compact device. It weighed more than 1 kilogram, had a length of about 22 centimeters, and looked more like a brick than a modern mobile phone, sharing the story of the creation of the first mobile phonerarephones.ru.
In standby mode, Motorola DynaTAC could work up to 8 hours, and in talk mode – about 1 hour. But it took a little more than 10 hours to recharge the device. It lacked a display and other additional features. The phone was decorated with a protruding stationary antenna.
On its front panel, there were 12 keys: 10 digital and 2 special for starting and stopping a call. It did not provide any auto-call features. If communication with the interlocutor was interrupted, the caller had to re-dial his phone number.
In addition to its impressive dimensions and heavy weight, the Motorola mobile had a dizzying price. Its cost was about $ 3,500, which is very expensive today even for premium gadgets.
After the first ever call from a mobile phone, about 10 years passed before cellular technologies were launched to the masses. That is how long it took Motorola to solve all the bureaucratic and technological problems associated with the launch of cellular service.
Commercially demanded, as well as successful cellular communication technology, became only by the 70s. In 1984 alone, just a year after the launch of Ameritech Mobile, the first US mobile network, the operator’s subscriber base numbered over 12,000 people.
According to statistics, the number of cellular subscribers in Kazakhstan in 2022 was about 25 million units, which is growing daily.
