DynaTAC 8000x

The DynaTAC's portability was truly unprecedented. Being able to take a call anywhere was the allure of the phone, as opposed to being restricted by the phone booths that were common at the time, another barrier that Motorola broke (AARP, N.D.).

When it was introduced to consumers in 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x revolutionized communication. It was the world's first cell phone, advancing significantly from its radio predecessors that accessed only a few channels, limiting the number of people that could communicate. “[The cell phone] was a basic two-way radio with a computer attached that allowed it to perform telephone actions” (Motorola Historic, N.D.). The cell phone was the culmination of 55 years of Motorola innovation, breaking the final wired barrier. Martin Cooper, recognized as the father of the cell phone, recalled in an interview that "As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones” (qtd. in Taylor, 2013).

Motorola's credibility increased cell phone sales. As a Motorolan said, “You look under 'radio' or 'communications service' in the Yellow Pages in any town and you’ll see Motorola, E.F. Johnson, and many, many Japanese names now. But if you’re looking for a pure network of servicing, there isn’t anything else like [Motorola] in our industry” (Brown, 1992).

Along with creating the cell phone, Motorola expanded cellular coverage across the US to be built on by future cellular technology. In an interview with a DynaTAC 8000x designer, Rudy Krollop, he stated that the “idea for a cell phone had been around for a while,” and was created because the “FCC was getting ready to allocate a new bandwidth,” and they knew that “if we didn’t do something then it would go straight to the [car]phone companies” (Popular Science, 2003). Cooper also disliked the carphone companies because “For a hundred years, we have been trapped in our homes, leashed to our desk by this copper wire, now was the time to set us free, and trapping us in our cars was not an improvement” (Martin Cooper, qtd. in Taylor, 2013). Motorola would not be stopped by this barrier, so they broke it.

(Startup Stories, 2017)

On April 3rd, 1973, the first call was made by Cooper “to his chief competitor, Dr. Joel Engel, who was head of Bell Labs: ‘Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone.’ Joel did not say a word, there was only silence on the other end of the line. Cooper shared with Bloomberg, ‘To this day, Joel doesn’t remember that call, and I’m not sure I blame him. It must be that the shock of finding out that he had lost the battle blacked out his memory’” (Taylor, 2013).

“In October 1973, the whole team filed a patent-- not just for the phone itself, but for ‘a radio telephone system’” (Garber, 2013). The system that connected the phone to channels was one of a kind, just like the phone (Cooper et al., 1975).

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