ITEC2706OE
Mobile Technology: Design and Use Fall 2023
Lecture 2
History of Mobile Phone
History of Mobile Phone
January 9, 2007– The world witnessed the first Apple iPhone.
Steve Jobs showcased the iPhone at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco, California- one of the most significant product launches of all time.
Later, on June 29, people in the United States got their hands on their first ever iPhone.
Since launched in June 2007, more than half a billion (500,000,000) iPhones have been sold (2015).
Google Android Phone was launched in 2008.
The iPhone and Android phones together changed the way we use our phones in a fundamental manner that nothing else has.
History of Mobile Phone
Over the past six decades, government bodies, international standards bodies, giant corporations, and individual innovators have tried to achieve whatever is possible in mobile technology.
Innovations came out of University labs, corporate labs, government labs, Workshops and conferences, and from people’s homes.
Our mobile phones have evolved to meet our ever-growing
expectations, and the networks have evolved to support
what people want to do with their phones.
History of Mobile Phone
Let’s Step Back a bit from all the complexity- we can spot some pretty remarkable trends and milestones that have fundamentally shaped the evolutionary history of the mobile phone and the mobile network.
A phrase from Steve Jobs- we will seek to “Connect the dots”
on the path that has led to the creation of the modern smartphone.
So. Let’s roll the tape back- All the way to the 1800s!
From Smoke Signals to Wireless Radio
For thousands of years, people have been inventing ways of communication- from fireworks to carrier Pigeons.
Early forms of wireless telegraphic systems- fireworks, and smoke or light signals to transmit information in a string of encoded symbols.
Though these look primitive, the basics of the phone were manufactured in this early time.
The Photophone by Alexander Graham Bell
A fascinating invention of Wireless telephony- February 1880.
Original: Sound to Light coupling and vice versa.
Enhancement: Sound-to-electricity-to-light coupling and vice versa.
Used on battlefields during the 1930s and 1940s for communications.
Sound-to-electricity-to-light coupling: the basis
History of Mobile Phone
Technical drawing of the
The advent of Radio Communications
While Alexander Bell’s Photophone in the 1880s showed the future of Optical communication, a revolution of an entirely different kind of communication was brewing in Europe and the United States- in the area of radio frequency communications.
In fact, the genesis of radio as a method of communication goes all the way back to the early 1800s.
From the 1800s to 1860s, several scientists in Europe, Russia, and the USA devised experiments to show Electricity and Magnetism were connected.
These experiments built the electromagnetic theory that makes
the basis for all forms of modern radio communications
including cell phones that we use today and the wireless network
that cell phones operate over.
The advent of Radio Communications
1865-Maxwell’s Theory: Electromagnetism culminated in the groundbreaking theory of Maxwell.
Maxwell presented a grand unification of several properties of electricity, magnetism, and light.
Maxwell’s theory predicted that electromagnetic waves can travel through space at the speed of light.
Henrich Rudrolf Hertz-German Physicist-1879
Proved Maxwell’s assertion that electromagnetic waves can actually travel through space after Maxwell’s death.
Also created a method to transmit and receive radio waves- first radio- frequency transmission and reception/ electromagnetic signals.
Invented Frequency: Cycles per second or Hertz.
Several scientists did experiments on Wireless radio communication (1890- 1895).
Nikola Tesla
Oliver Lodge
Thomas Edison
Jagdish Chandra Bose Replicate and built upon the work of Hertz (transmission of electromagnetic wave)
But nobody managed to create a commercially viable radio frequency telegraph system.
Radio Communications
Graphic from Thomas Edison’s 1891 Patent Application: Radio Frequency Communication
between Ships and Between Ship and Shore
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian engineer, in 1897, created a practically workable and commercially viable method of radio transmission and reception.
Invented Marconi Company.
Set up the first station at Niton, England, and successfully transmitted a radio message to Bournemouth, England over a distance of 22 Kilometers.
Wireless Radio telegraph signals/Radio messages were sent over a distance of 34 miles using Marconi’s radiotelegraph technology.
During the early 1900s, the Marconi company also succeeded in commercializing wireless transmissions across the Atlantic (from England to St.John’s in Newfoundland, Canada) and from Ship to Shore.
Radio Communications
The invention of Radio Telephony
Radio frequency wireless telegraphy became invaluable for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications, an area where cable-based telegraphic systems could not be used.
While radio frequency telegraphy gained widespread acceptance by the early 1900s, the transmission of sound over a radio frequency was not far behind.
The credit for the first sound transmission over a radio
channel is said to lie with the Canadian inventor
Fessenden.
Radio Telephony
Fessenden invented a modified transmitter that produced a more continuous radio signal necessary for the transmission of the sound.
On December 23, 1900, Fessenden successfully made the first long-range audio transmission over radio frequencies over a distance of 1 mile.
Fessenden spoke over the radio channel with his associate “One- two-three-four, is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, would you telegraph back to me?”
The associate replied in the affirmative and the rest is history! The age of radio telephony was born.
Radio Telephony
During the early part of the 1990s, Fessenden’s system was extended, modified, and augmented in several other fields.
Operating frequencies were extended.
Methods of transmission and reception underwent significant changes.
Transmission range was broadened.
Radio telephony began to be used by from the US Weather Bureau to public signals.
Up through the 1940s, radio telephony proliferated in Europe and North America.
Used for Ship to Ship, Ship to Shore communications, on the battlefields, and on trains for placing “ pay phone calls” (German Railway installed “pay- phones” in the first-class compartments of trains by 1926).
From Trains, ships, and Tanks to the Motor Cars- The Era of ZERO-G
The first large-scale rollout of a metropolitan mobile telephone network took place during the mid to late 1940s.
The rollout completely skipped the hands and pockets of people and was installed in people’s motor vehicles in the form of the Car Phone.
At starting, each mobile phone weighed around 80 pounds (36 Kilograms).
Required a car to move.
The mobile phone system of the 1940s was targeted toward an American population dependent on Automobiles rather than trains- What better place to put a phone in than in their car!
This system in the United States was called as “Mobile Telephone Service (MTS)”.
MTS (Mobile Telephone Service) & IMTS (Improved MTS)
One of the earliest attempts of using a car mounted phone. Notice the Transmitter-receiver unit and the enormous antenna mounted on top of it.
MTS & IMTS
MTS was rolled out by AT & T Bell Laboratories.
AT & T was already the operator of the Public Switched Telephone Network-the land-based telephone system.
MTS operated in the Very High Frequency (VHF) range (30-300 Megahertz) whereas modern cell phone networks operate in the 850MHz to 2100 MHz-Ultra High Frequency (UHF) range. UHF frequencies are anywhere from 3 to 70 times higher than VHF frequencies. This leads to a short antenna design like the one found in modern cell phones.
* Note: In radio communications, the length of the antenna is inversely proportional to the transmission frequency.
MTS & IMTS
The concept of cellular networks, in which mobile towers located inside the small
“cells” would seamlessly hand off calls to towers in neighboring cells as we move around, became reality later in the 20th century.
“Zero-G” mobile phone systems such as AT &T’s Mobile Telephone Service were based on the concept/notion of one large tower serving a large geographical area around it.
“Zero-G” mobile phone systems
MTS & IMTS
MTS required Operator assistance to make calls.
The system was strictly duplex, similar to a walkie-talkie- need to push a button to talk and then go to listen.
Phone equipment mounted inside the vehicle consisted of a transmitter-receiver unit (transceiver) which took up most of the trunk space of the vehicle.
MTS equipment was heavy, power-hungry, and came with very few channels- only a few people could call at one time within a base station’s network.
Was very expensive but dramatically popular within North America.
MTS & IMTS
During 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, MTS was improved iteratively.
Miniaturization was implemented and the telephone equipment became less bulky.
The system began to support full duplex operations-talk and listen at the same time.
In some cases, people could directly dial the number from their car phone instead of going through the operator’s assistance.
In 1964, the feature of non-operator-assisted dialing from car phones was mainstreamed by the next generation of MTS. AT & T named the improved version of MTS as the Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS).
IMTS
From 1964 to the early 1980s, IMTS flourished in North America- Full duplex direct dialing from the car phone became a reality for most North American Car phone users.
During this time, the invention of the electronic solid state transistor also enormously helped the cause of mobile telephony. As a result, mobile phones were further miniaturized and by the early 1970s, Motorola was already manufacturing completely solid state versions of phone units.
In the late 1960s, IMTS compliant mobile phones were small enough to fit inside a stylish briefcase that people could carry with
Growth of Zero-G system Outside North America
During the 1940s through the 1980s, while the USA and Canada were going all out in their roll-outs of car phones, the rest of the world was not far behind.
The A-Netz mobile telephone network launched in West Germany in 1958 became one of the world’s largest mobile networks.
The Altai mobile car phone service was introduced in Moscow in 1963.
Finland launched the ARP car radio phone service in 1971 and by 1978 the whole country was covered.
One of the largest zero-generation mobile telephone network rollouts happened in Sweden during the 1950s through the 80s.
Drawbacks of early mobile networks:
VHF range requires Long Antenna.
Could accommodate a small number of subscribers.
Network Congestion and excessive signal interference.
Coverage was a Line-of-sight basis-The whole system worked based on a central base station- if someone went behind a tall building or any other large object-the person immediately lost the signal.
Heavy Weighted.
Earth’s curvature: People could lose the signal even on the absolutely obstruction-less ground when they traveled “over the horizon” with respect to the base station.
