'They are out of their minds': Inventor of mobile phone isn't as happy seeing people use it

Imagining a life without mobile phones seems impossible today. A lot of us spend most of our waking moments with the device in our hands. Social media has taken our obsession with the mobile phone to a whole new level. Many of us have our eyes glued to the screen for a major chunk of the day. This is exactly why the inventor of the mobile phone himself is "devastated" by his own invention.

Martin Cooper, an American engineer dubbed the "Father of the cell phone", says everyone is a "little obsessed" with mobile phones today.

"I am devastated when I see somebody crossing the street and looking at their cell phone. They are out of their minds," the 94-year-old told AFP from his office in Del Mar, California.

"But after a few people get run over by cars, they'll figure it out," he joked.

But Cooper is one to see the bright side of things and says mobile phones hold immense potential and will one day be able to "revolutionise education and healthcare".

"In the future, we can expect the cell phone to revolutionize education, it will revolutionize healthcare.

"I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but I want you to know within a generation or two, we are going to conquer disease."

Cooper wears an Apple Watch and uses a top-end iPhone. He tests almost every new phone model but confesses that it is all becoming a little too much.

"I will never, ever understand how to use the cell phone the way my grandchildren and great-grandchildren do," he says.

Talking about the first mobile phone, Cooper said a handset used to cost around $5,000. But the early adopters saw an edge in it.

"It turns out that what real estate people do is they show people houses, or they answer the phone for new clients," Cooper recounted.

"Now they could do both at the same time; it doubled their productivity."

Cooper made the first-ever mobile phone call on April 3, 1973, using a weighty block of wires and circuits.

He was working for Motorola at that time and leading a team of designers and engineers aimed at creating a truly mobile technology. The company aimed to beat Bell System, a company that dominated US telecoms for over a century since 1877. Bell System has been thinking about cellular phone systems since the end of World War II. But they could only put it in cars by the late 1960s, mainly because of the huge battery they needed.

But Cooper wanted to make a proper mobile phone that could be used anywhere. By the end of March 1973, he made a breakthrough and unveiled the DynaTAC -- Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage -- phone. It weighed over a kilo and had a battery life of roughly 25 minutes of talking.

The first-ever call he made was to his competitor, Dr Joel Engel at Bell System. Standing on Sixth Avenue (in New York), I said, "Joel, this is Martin Cooper... I'm talking to you on a handheld cell phone. But a real cell phone, personal, portable, handheld."

"There was silence on the other end of the line. I think he was gritting his teeth."

(With inputs from agencies)

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