Before the devices existed that are now referred to as mobile phones or cell phones, there were some precursors. In 1908, a Professor Albert Jahnke and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not seem to have proceeded with production. Beginning in 1918, the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen. In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie AG was founded to supply train telephony equipment and, in 1926, telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to first-class travelers.
Mobile phones, particularly the smartphones that have become our inseparable companions today, are relatively new.
However, the history of mobile phones goes back to 1908 when a US Patent was issued in Kentucky for a wireless telephone.
Mobile phones were invented as early as the 1940s when engineers working at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations.
Right after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, inventors began working on a mobile version. As Motherboard notes, Bell himself tried his hand at it in 1880 with the photophone, a telephone that could transmit speech using light.
A short while later, in 1908, a Kentucky-based farmer and self-taught electrician named Nathan Stubblefield patented the design of a mobile phone that was intended to facilitate communications among boats, trains and way stations. Although it didn’t catch on at the time, people never gave up their fascination with the idea of communicating while in transit.
Today mobile phones are a necessity for many people. Whether it be for work, or for keeping in touch with family in friends, many of us admit to being ‘lost’ without our mobiles, which often replace everything from our birthday calendars to our personal-organisers. Although mobiles have been integrated into our daily way of life, it was only 30 years ago that the first mobile call was made in the UK; and if you look back at the size of the phones in the 80s and 90s, it’s debatable as to whether they should have been deemed ‘mobile’ at all. In this interactive timeline, we take a look at how things have changed since the original phone call was made nearly 140 years ago.
As early as the 1980s, European engineers and administrators began discussing the possibility of a European digital cellular network, laying the groundwork for a later international standard. Meanwhile, Japan launched the first commercially automated national cellular phone network in 1981. Around this time, it was becoming more common for prominent politicians and business leaders to use car phones, which signaled a certain level of success and prestige. In 1989, Motorola released its MicroTac flip phone — a direct precursor to the personal mobile phones we use today.
Mobile telephony went international in 1987, as the GSM standard that supports interoperability between carriers around the globe was codified. Just a few years later, the world’s first SMS message was sent in Britain. The BlackBerry arrived in 1999, heralding a new wave of mobile connectivity for business use. By the start of the twenty-first century, consumers and businesses were beginning to use mobile phones en masse for voice calling, email and limited text-based web browsing. The history of mobile technology saw an important milestone in 2003 with the arrival of 3G cellular broadband service, which would herald a new era of smartphones with full internet connectivity.
The history of mobile technology is more extensive than we might immediately assume. As we proceed ever more rapidly into the future, it will be exciting to see how such bold innovation once again changes the world around us....
In 1965, Bulgarian company "Radioelektronika" presented on the Inforga-65 international exhibition in Moscow the mobile automatic phone combined with a base station. Solutions of this phone were based on a system developed by Leonid Kupriyanovich. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to 15 customers.[10]
The advances in mobile telephony can be traced in successive generations from the early "0G" services like MTS and its successor Improved Mobile Telephone Service, to first-generation (1G) analog cellular network, second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, third-generation (3G) broadband data services to the state-of-the-art, fourth-generation (4G) native-IP networks.
Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://mobilebusinessinsights.com/2018/03/the-history-of-mobile-technology-and-its-future/