Mobile Phones

Wednesday, 30 September, 2009 @ 10:20PM

Things take up such an integral part of our daily lives that we seldom think back as to how they came in. Many of them began as prototypes, and eccentric concepts. But only some of them went on to shape our lives, like no great war, or great depressions, could have ever done. Mobile technology has spread like forest-fire- A holy fire that consumes you only to transform you into something even more magnificent.

Speaking of mobile phones and how they've added themselves to the usual list of food, clothing and shelter, the most interesting thing is that it never was intended for the masses in the first place. In the year 1910, Lars Magnus Ericsson, who later went on to found the Ericsson mobile phone company, installed a telephone in his car, and would use it intermittently on a highway, by connecting it to the national telephone lines! Over the years, Motorola came up with some new gadgets that were free of having to be linked with telephone lines. The early man of the present-day cellular was a mobile radio that was fitted with invariable transmission - connecting to only its pair or some other frequencies. It was used in the armed forces, for message relays and espionage. Slowly and moving quite out of rhythm, mobile rigs (as they were then known) were found with cabdrivers and police cruisers, still sticking to a two-way system of relays. It wasn't connected to a common telephone network; hence, it wasn't a proper mobile phone yet. Between 1940 and 1970, happened a huge change, from the cellular becoming a weirdo's gig, to a status symbol to amassing a lot of popularity. There were networks launched in Finland, with limited areas of hassle-free conversations. These were later dubbed as the zero generation phones.

What followed was the first generation. On April 3, 1973, Motorola employee Dr. Martin Cooper placed a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs, while walking the streets of New York City talking on the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype in front of reporters. It showed that it had finally been proclaimed a public phenomenon. The second generation brought along the GSM networks. Coinciding with its occurrence, The Brick-sized phones also went out fashion, and small palm-held phones came into vogue. Then came along, the third generation, providing people with a network within a network! Data transfers and longer range of transmission were distinguishable with the 3G networks. By the end of 2007 there were 295 Million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base.

Today, when we hear the very familiar "hello moto" or the heavily popularized Nokia ring-tone few wonder that it’s like Jack and the bean-stalk. Only this time, Jack turned the bean-stalk into a network tower.

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