Dr. Mahlon Loomis of Virginia, however, became the first person to transmit telegraphic messages through wireless technology sent though the atmosphere between the years 1866 and 1873. The messages traveled a distance of 18 miles between Coshocton and Beorse Deer Mountains, Virginia. He conceived of a method of transmitting and receiving messages by using the Earth's atmosphere as a conductor and launching kites enclosed with a copper screens that were linked to the ground with copper wires.
Competition between Bell Labs and Motorola fueled the race to create a prototype of the first cell phone. Though Bell Labs had achieved success by installing radio systems into police cars, it is not credited with having won the race since the devices were too large to carry and consequently cannot be considered mobile telephones in a practical sense.
It was in the year 1973 that cell phones can be said to have been born when Martin Cooper, a scientist working for Motorola, walking through the streets of New York City made the first ever cell phone call to Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs – his rival talking on the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype.
No doubt, Martin Cooper was a visionary and it was the outcome of his vision that you see in everybody’s hands or pockets today. “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” Cooper said.
If we turn the pages of history we find that Chicago (1977) and Tokyo (1979) were the first cities in the world where cell phones came to be used and these were distributed to 2000 customers on trial basis. Or in other words, cell phones went public.
It was really in the eighties that the age of cell phone began but not without a struggle. The FCC in the United States which regulates and allocates radio bandwidth licensed the 800 MHz frequency for cell phone usage. As the rush increased, there was a clamor for more of the bandwidth space. However the FCC did not allocate extra bandwidth. This forced the cell phone companies to develop better technology which made optimal use of the available bandwidth and thus the era of cell phone began.
In 1982, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) launched the advisory group that would eventually create the GSM standard for cellphone communications. GSM is currently the most widely used protocol in Europe and is the only standard used in Europe and many other parts of the world. In the US, there have been several competing standards developed including the CDMA standard used by both Verizon Wireless and Sprint.
In the year 1988 the Cellular Technology Industry Association (CTIA) was formed with the purpose of laying down goals for cellular phone providers.
The cell phone industry has been growing rapidly taking long strides. The cell phone has also evolved from the simple ‘push to talk’ to picture cell phones, which include a digital camera, to touch screen phones, with internet access, play music, email etc.
As per the latest statistics available, there are 2,168,433,600 cell phone users the world over with the European Union leading with a whopping 466,000,000 users closely followed by China with 437,480,000 users , followed by the US with 219,400,000 users.