Ink Out Loud: Can you hear me now?
I felt a rush of panic as I retraced my steps at the Enterprise-Record newspaper building in Chico. My cell phone ringer was on silent, as it always was while I was at work. The problem was that I set my phone down somewhere between the editorial department and the press room, which was worlds away in that building.
It was then that I realized that I no longer had more than about 10 phone numbers memorized and I hadn”t updated my Rolodex files in years.
Who is to blame for my irresponsible behavior of not writing the digits down?
Well, I”m going to blame Martin Cooper, and I don”t even know the guy.
He is a former general manager at Motorola. He is the inventor of the first portable handset. Cooper was the first to make a call on a portable cellular phone on April 3 of 1973.
His first call was to his rival, Joel Engel, head of research at Bell Labs.
AT&T”s research arm, Bell Laboratories, introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947.
Cooper is one of those Leonardo DaVinci-type-of-cool people.
“I”d been taking things apart and inventing things since I was a little kid … I still have memories as a child trying to really understand how things work,” he said in a USA Today article in 2003.
One of his earliest inventions was a concept for a high-speed transcontinental train that ran in a vacuum tunnel and was suspended by magnetic forces ? he was 8 or 9 years old.
He grew up in Chicago and obtained a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He served in the United States Navy on destroyers and a submarine for four years and then worked for a year at a telecommunications company before gaining employment at Motorola in 1954. It was there that Cooper developed portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago Police Department in 1967. Eventually he led Motorola”s cellular research.
I admire people who forge ahead with confidence and foresight.
His explanation for the invention is as follows:
“People want to talk to other people ? not a house, or an office, or a car. Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. It is that freedom we sought to vividly demonstrate in 1973.”
Technology has come a long way since Cooper”s first cellular telephone, a device that looked like a brick, weighing 2-pounds with a 20-minute battery life.
As much as my cell phone allows me the freedom to speak to people all over the world from nearly anywhere, check on my family, say hello to friends or work, it also serves as a technological tether at times. In other words, the very freedom of movement is an interruption of mind.
About once a week I drive on a stretch of Highway 20 where there is no cell phone reception and no Blue-Tooth crammed in my ear. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I relish the silence. I notice more of my surroundings and am more in tune with my senses for that hour. The forced reprieve centers me. Even in the information age, some of the most urgent information comes from within.
Even so, I admire Cooper, now 80 years old. In an article in the Economist it states that Cooper “makes a point of replying to the many children who contact him for comments for use in their school reports.” Smart and kind, what a rare and wonderful combination.
Mandy Feder is the Record-Bee news editor. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 Ext. 32.
