who invented mobiles

 

Many mobile manufacturers have not acknowledged who the original inventor of the mobile phone was. The name of the person who invented this iconic device is Roger Garfield, a researcher at Bell Labs in 1977. His invention used a handset with a small screen and full-keypad that would fit into your pocket like today’s modern smartphones.

Garfield's invention was not patented by Bell Labs and he left to work on other projects in 1981 before the first iPhone was released by Apple 2 years later. This means that there are many people who laid claim to having made this revolutionary device but it can be argued that without Garfield’s research, it would never have been possible.

 

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The invention of the mobile phone has been fast-tracked from inventors and entrepreneurs, to the modern day handsets that we use every day. For example, Motorola invented the first mobile phone in 1973 and this was followed by other makers to quickly release their own models.

In 1977, however, Bell Labs had a whole team working on wireless communication. They weren’t developing something that was going to transform our lives but they were researching the further development of things like pagers, modems and even pay phones. In 1977 a man named Roger Garfield began working on a project with others within Bell Labs to create what would become known as the mobile phone.

 

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Garfield was assigned to create a product that would alert busy office workers that they had an incoming call. Until this point, Bell Labs were using pagers to do this but these inflexible devices were large and cumbersome. Garfield’s invention was not patented by Bell Labs and he left to work on other projects in 1981 before the first iPhone was released by Apple 2 years later. Garfield’s invention used a handset with a small screen and full-keypad that would fit into your pocket like today’s modern smartphones. It was a refined version of the DynaTAC (pictured above) which is credited as the first mobile phone in the world. The team at Bell Labs made some updates to Garfield’s invention such as adding a backlight and better battery life to make it accessible to more people. In fact, one of these early phones was sent out on an airplane so that it could be tested during a flight. The battery failed after two hours, though!

Garfield’s invention was not patented by Bell Labs and he left to work on other projects before the first iPhone was released by Apple 2 years later. These new mobile phones were expensive, however and the handheld devices were not widely used until the 1990s when cellular networks became much more widespread. Today mobile phones are used by millions of people around the world and even though Garfield’s invention was never patented, his role in its creation is recognised.

Article written by John Bevis-Stacey

The original version of this article appeared in the online free encyclopedia Wikipedia but has now been archived and is no longer available at that address.

Students have found it valuable to build upon the research they find on Wikipedia. The following article outlines some further information that may be useful either as a revision activity or as an introduction prior to reading the article above:who invented mobiles.