Talk:Martin Cooper (inventor)

Inconsistent information about children
The article stated that Cooper has "no kids" and, at the same time, stated that he has "12 children". Corrected based on http://martincooper4.wordpress.com/about/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.157.128.2 (talk) 11:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Untitled
The interview section should probably be transwikied over to wikisource, if it's not a copyvio. siafu 19:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm removing the Q&A section - it doesn't belong here --David.Mestel 15:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

What has Martin Cooper done for Us?????
martin cooper has made a huge change in society today, why just look at all of the sidekicks sliders and touchphones out these days ....wothout martin cooper none of those great inventions would be discovered —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.169 (talk) 03:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Martin Cooper wrote the quoted section I hate to mess up a good story but the Star Trek anecdote is not exactly true. A TV program entitled “How William Shatner Changed the World” has a segment showing me being inspired by the Star Trek Communicator, but they made it up and I went along because it was “cute”. I’ve been sorry ever since. in an email on Dec 14,2009. His email was a response to my query about the veracity of the story that Star Trek inspired him to invent the cell phone. He cc'ed Michele Harden at delmarca.com on the correspondence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.189.249.13 (talk) 00:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm removing the personal email
I'm sorry, but a personal email where Martin denies being inspired by Star Trek does not pass WP:V; we have reliable sources starting that Martin was inspired by Star Trek and no reliable sources retracting this claim. It may very well be true that this is an urban legend, but Wikipedia is based on what we can verify, not the truth. If Martin had a web page or blog where he states this, that would be one thing; but until we can get more solid truth, this has to be deleted because of WP:BLP. Samboy (talk) 05:13, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

WHEN AND WHERE INVENTION CREATED —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.171.150 (talk) 23:54, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

infobox needs clean
At the moment the infobox says that martin cooper was born in 1928, and he was 82 years old at the time. Can someone please fix? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ozkidzez91 (talk • contribs) 06:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah alright, apparently I'm an idiot, or haven't seen the wikipedia page of a living person before. Seriously though, you can forgive my mistake, as that is the most literal interpretation of what is written there. Maybe wikipedia should look into this... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ozkidzez91 (talk • contribs) 06:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Odd emphasis
Why is a point made in the first sentence to say that his parents were Ukrainian? Is the practice of emphasizing the origin of famous people's immigrant parents a policy? I've never seen such a thing anywhere else on Wikipedia... 69.126.210.25 (talk) 01:11, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I am curious just how accurate that line is. It seems to be lifted straight from The Economist (which makes that emphasis in its article on Cooper), but other sources name his parents as the very un-Ukrainian sounding Arthur and Mary Cooper (unless they anglicized from Kuprin or something).Konchevnik81 (talk) 02:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Why does the summary repeat an incorrect notion without clear comment?
The summary includes the statement: He is considered the "father of the cell phone."  Bell Laboratories actually invented cellular telephony--both the concept and the first practical system, which of course included cell phones (in automobiles). It is true that due to savvy marketing, many people in the media--and even some technical people who really ought to know better--falsely treat Mr. Cooper as the inventor/father of the cell phone, but that is simply ignorance. He can indeed be called the inventor/father of the handheld portable phone and (later) the handheld cell phone.

I suggest changing the statement in one of these two directions:

- Specifically use the qualifier handheld, or

- Specifically mention that the popular attribution is incorrect, and that Bell Laboratories actually invented cellular telephony.

Bell Labs' patent of cellular mobile communication system:

Description of Bell Labs' Advanced Mobile Phone Service, the first practical cellular telephone system. It went into trial service in 1978, with full commercial service in 1983:

Mainstream references to Bell Labs' invention of cellular telephone systems/networks:

BeSkepticalOfAll (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Why was his Jewish ancestry not mentioned in the article and categories?
http://www.jewoftheweek.net/2011/12/14/jews-of-the-week-martin-cooper-joel-engel/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:780A:8D00:2C65:FD:924C:CA75 (talk) 01:52, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

References to or merging with Nordic Mobile Telephone
I react to the fact that there are no references to MNT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) which in other articles is mentioned as the first successful mobile phone system. True, the first models were car mounted, later versions were detachable but HEAVY (battery was big to give god life between charging) and big but early on there was handheld versions (heavy ones). It was successful since it was fairly cheep and with borderless roaming, it worked as one net at the same charge all over the Nordic countries. I worked at NOKIA at that time and the phones was early on usually used by transferring the call to the office exchange where you had a meeting, but since it did not care in what country you was it was practical! I want some unification about mobile phone history from the early experiments in Sweden and USA to the today global coverage (including Iridium). (Any takers?)Seniorsag (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

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Why is he listed as Ukrainian? He's Jewish
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.29.102.252 (talk) 10:07, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I live in England, I am a Jew, I am not English, I am British. By family came from Lithuania in 1880. They were Jews, not Lithuanians. Martin Cooper is a Jew, not a Ukrainian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.118.117.46 (talk) 11:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested edit under Awards and Affiliations
- under Awards, can we please link Marty's 2013 Marconi Prize to his Marconi Fellow description here: http://marconisociety.org/fellows/martin-cooper/

Thanks.

Preinman (talk) 04:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC) preinman


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Cooper invented the first handheld cellular mobile phone
Not really.

Soviets had a CDMA phone in the late 1950s made by Leonid Kupriyanovich. http://www.izmerov.narod.ru/okno/index.html 71.173.17.219 (talk) 03:14, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Question 1 Can you point to where it says he used CDMA in that article? I don't see it.  That would have been quite a feat with vacuum tubes.


 * Question 2

More of these articles have popped up in recent years and generated discussions between Motorola employees.

What does it mean to 'invent' something? Does it mean to first think of the idea, or does it mean to actually make the first one with their own hands, or direct others to make something that will work as imagined? Which of those is Marty credited in doing?

I worked at Motorola, several levels under Marty and started developing equipment for the cellular system early in 1974 along with dozens of other engineers, in both the product development and research groups. This was a lot like Edison 'inventing' the light bulb.

I'm sure Marty had to insure the programs had resources & funding and may have had to make sure the corporate leaders and board were signed up for the resources. But from my view, it was mid level people at Motorola working with those at Bell labs to hash out the concepts needed for such wide area coverage and the details of how to do it. Hoards of engineers and support groups made the hardware/software happen.

I can provide references for pocket phones in the 1950s and for a flip phone example actually shown in 1963 and a video phone in the 1930s along with an Atlantic article from 1945, when we only had vacuum tubes, about having all the knowledge of the word at our fingertips.

Also, at least in the 60's, hams had automatic interfaces into the phone system (Auto Patch) that they could use from their mobile and hand held transceivers. I talked with my wife from my car, going to work, then immediately leaving because she went into labor with our first son late in 1970.

Also, the term "cellular" is from the way multiple base sites are spread out over an area allowing many users to be very mobile, so considering a 1950's 'small phone" 'cellular' may be inappropriate. It may have been hand-held, or portable phone, or a large box in the trunk, but was the cellular concept even proposed with it?   And what was actually "had" by Kupriyanovich?  From Wikipedia, it is reported to be what we would call a 'cordless phone' to a home base unit.

Before that, I believe in the mid 1940s, _mobile_ phones called 'car phones' were in service, called Mobile Telephone System or MTS with an operator placing the calls, later Improved to IMTS which was automatic dialing (no operator). In these systems one greater metro area such as Chicago and suburbs had up to three 12-14 channel systems for a really large "cell". This allowed less than 40 calls at one time in the entire metro area.

It is easy to see from that Russian article above, that there were many people thinking in the same direction for a long time and that the ideas progressed and evolved as the technologies advanced, thus making the miniaturization possible.

So. What I'm saying is that if we're going to assign him the title of 'inventor', that needs to clearly define his role. It's easy for us engineers to chuckle when we see the Marty articles. Regards, Steve &#32;-- Steve --  (talk) 18:13, 11 March 2023 (UTC).

Test
Test 114.125.86.251 (talk) 11:40, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

What is a reprise
This article fails from the very first paragraph with the completely nonsensical use of reprise. Since these guys were the inventors of this technology, they were not reprising anything, as this means to repeat someone else's work. Use proper terminology when writing articles like this. PatrickDunfordNZ (talk) 06:46, 18 December 2022 (UTC)