Doing Social History through Oral History: Background research. 1st part. The arrival of the mobile phone: the revolutionary communication device

In this entry we are going to learn a little bit about when the first mobile phone appeared and how it has changed till our day.

DynaTAC 8000X

Before the first phone was created we used to communicate by radio. That small machine was like a magic box that had the power to inform you about everything. Although it seemed to be the top of technology, in the 20s, there were the first attempts to communicate by mobile phone. In 1923, police in Australia found the first way to communicate in a wireless way.
But was a huge machine inside a car. They continued improving and in 1940 they started to allow people to use them. At the end, it was in 1946 when it appeared the first commercial phone, reaching in 1964 1.5 millions of users.

However, it wasn't till 1973 when Martin Cooper and his Motorola team commercialized the first personal mobile phone. This one was called DynaTAC 8000X, it was like 1 kilo weight and the battery last for 1 hour.

Since this moment till now, changes have happened so fast. Some improves that has change life have been the following:

Better quality of voice.
From the transmission of info through infrared till the use of data.
International calls.
Less weight, size, price.
Touch and big screen.
Videoconferences.
TV.
GPS
Emails
...

Click here, to see a statistic that shows us the amount of people that has mobile phone nowadays. To be more specific, this table compares some countries depending on the amount of people that have mobile phone and the percentage that this amount represents for the country.