Happy 100th Birthday to the mobile phone – text message from the Queen?
The mobile phone is 100 years old this week. Seriously. That’s what Virgin Mobile are reminding us. No, it’s not a comment on their out-dated handsets, it’s really true.
Back on 12th May 1908, in Kentucky, Nathan Stubblefield suspended wire, with a listening device attached, between to telegraph poles and placed a transmitter on top of a train. When the train passed by the wire, the signal traveled through the air and could be heard at the other end, and just like that – ignoring about 65 years of development – the mobile phone was born.
Stubblefield patented his new device but sadly died penniless being too far advanced of any decent service providers and texting teens.
Of course the first mobile to pass FCC regulations and grow into general use was the Motorola DynaTAC as invented by Dr Martin Cooper and modeled above by fictional eighties industrialist Gordon Gekko.
If you’d like to learn more about Stubblefield you can go to the Virgin website. If you’d like to do the same in more detail and with less pressure to buy something afterwards you can take a look at the Wikipedia page. Personally, I’m going to watch Wall Street instead.
Related posts: Virgin Media offers iPlayer | Virgin Mobile DAB service axed
