How It Works

Top 5 Facts: Mobile phone history

by · 21/05/2011

1835

  • Samuel Morse made the first working electric telegraph to send and receive complex messages, and in 1844 he sent the first message: “What hath God wrought?”

1973

  • Motorola engineer Dr Martin Cooper made the first handled mobile phone to call to his invention rival Joel Engel at AT&T in 1973.

1985

  • First-generation (1G) mobile phones entered the market in the Eighties; they were large and heavy devices with limited battery lives that could only make voice calls.

1992

  • The introduction of the 2G network allowed for text messaging and basic Internet access, and by 1999 76% of the UK owned a mobile phone.

2001

  • Japan launched the first 3G network, bringing with it faster mobile Internet, and by 2007 there were a total of 200 million 3G users worldwide.