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For the illusion of success – an imitation “pigtail” antenna.
Dummy phone handsets with a phone cord attached to nothing
were another popular consumer item in the early years of cellular.

company capital started flooding the market. The appeal was
simple: why spend downtime in your car when you could use
that time to work? Even at $4,000, an investment in a car
telephone would practically pay for itself in added productivity!
That message totally resonated with commuters and mobile
workers in and around big cities who spent hours a day stuck in
traffic or out in the field. More than just a productivity tool,
cellular phones were also becoming a new status symbol, with
the pigtail antenna on a rear window of a car visual confirma-
tion of one’s wealth and success. It was not long before every-
one knew what a car telephone was, even if they still could not
afford one. Motorola Engineer Martin Cooper, inventor of the
world’s first portable cellular telephone.
The World’s First Cellular Telephone handheld police radios, which were introduced in 1967, but Motorola’s
Despite being invented in America by engineers at Bell core business in these early years was in the manufacturing of land
Labs, initial concerns about cellular’s true potential kept most mobile radio equipment for public safety agencies and mobile
American manufacturers, with the exception of Motorola, out telephones for cellular’s precursors, Mobile Telephone Service (MTS),
of the consumer cellular phone business in the early days, there- and Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS).
by opening the door for many Japanese technology manufacturers Given that these technologies were products of Bell Labs and that
to enter the U.S. market on the ground floor. One such company was AT&T had a monopoly on all “telephone technologies” at the time,
OKI Electronics, known in the U.S. at that time for their OkiData this put manufacturers such as Motorola at a disadvantage when selling
office printers. into the market. As the FCC turned its sites in the mid-1970s on licensing
OKI secured equipment contracts with six out of the seven Baby a more advanced form of mobile phone service based on AT&T’s new
Bells to private label their cellular telephones early on after they manu- cellular architecture, Motorola feared the end of its mobile business if
factured what is considered to be the world’s first cellular car telephone AT&T got a monopoly on both the network equipment and phones.
for the original Chicago cellular service trial in 1978. To support the Motorola’s founder Paul Galvin placed Cooper in charge of their
emerging American market and their Bell cellular telephone division with an urgent
Operating Co. customers, OKI established a mandate to design and engineer for the future
completely robotic assembly plant in of this new wireless technology in a market-
Norcross, Georgia, and hired an all-American place Motorola was intent on dominating.
sales and marketing team to work directly While the focus among equipment and
with their new carrier customers. I joined that phone manufacturers in those early days was
team in May of 1984 as the advertising and on delivering a better, scalable network service
public relations manager and moved to the and manufacturing practical and relatable
new OKI America corporate offices in devices that could make and receive telephone
Hackensack, NJ. calls in a car, Cooper conceived the next
OKI’s first generation commercial cellular generation of a mobile phone as something
telephone, the CDL 200 series, was com- that could fit in the palm of your
prised of a battery and transceiver-receiver in hand for truly portable communi-
the trunk of the vehicle with a total weight of cations. Ten years after he made
around 86 pounds; a handset installed by the the first cellular call on his proto-
driver’s seat that was attached by a coil to a Vintage 1980s OKI CDL 410 type DynaTAC portable phone on
Transportable Bag Phone
handset cradle; and a “pigtail” antenna with carrying case. the streets of New York City,
installed on the roof or rear window. Cooper’s DynaTAC 8000X
received FCC approval on
Cutting the Cord September 21, 1983, as the world’s
When a new technology catches on, con- first commercial handheld,
sumer demand becomes the accelerant that portable cellular telephone. This
drives new product development. Bringing clunky “portable” phone, dubbed
basic phone functionality into a mobile vehicle “The Brick” weighed 2.4 lb (1.1 kg),
was one thing, but what if you could take the measured 9.1 x 5.1 x 1.8 in (23 x 13
phone with you when you left the vehicle and x 4.5 cm), offered a talk time of just
continue to make and receive calls? 30 minutes, required 10 hours to
Deeply invested and entrenched in the cel- recharge, and was priced at $3,995
lular marketplace, both Motorola and OKI (roughly $10,000 in today’s dollars).
embarked on a race in the second half of the It was revolutionary in concept and
1980s to turn the car telephone completely design but had a few generations and
portable. Here, Motorola had the competitive iterations to go before cost, function-
edge thanks to Marty Cooper’s vision and ality, and battery life made the
work on the DynaTAC handheld portable cellular telephone. Motorola DynaTAC affordable and practical.

The Father of Cellular Portability weighs into the mix
Widely regarded as the father of the cellular phone, Marty Cooper It was not long before more manufacturers, many from overseas,
joined Motorola in 1954. While at Motorola, Cooper worked on many entered the U.S. market with products designed for portable mobility.
projects involving wireless communications, such as the first radio- Companies such as OKI, Nokia, NEC, Siemens, and Samsung all tried
controlled traffic-light system, which he patented in 1960, and the first their hand at making “portable” cellular phones for an exploding U.S.

16 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles