英文阅读:Cellphone man still inventing

Soda

THIRTY years after the first cellular phone call, inventor Martin Cooper still dreams about the day when futuristic telephone technology will be a reality.

Cooper's dream telephone is like this: it is so small that it fits behind his ear, it automatically dials out when he thinks about calling someone, and it notifies him of incoming calls with a tickle instead of a ring.

The 74-year-old American has yet to see that vision become a reality. But in the three decades since he invented cell phones, their size has shrunk so much that they fit into users' palms. At about 4 ounces, a cell phone weighs little more than a lemon.

That is a long way from the 30-ounce phone Cooper used when he made the first portable phone call on April 3, 1973 ? 30 years ago. The phone was 25.4 centimetres in height, 7.6 centimetres deep, and 3.8 centimetres wide.

"Our basic idea was that people didn't want to talk to cars. They didn't want to talk to a desk or a wall (where phones were generally placed). They wanted to talk to other people," said Cooper.

Cooper's invention would be considered a heavy box by today's standards, but back then it was revolutionary.

Raised in Chicago, Cooper received a degree in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

"I'd been taking things apart and inventing things since I was a little kid ... I still have memories as a child trying to really understand how things work," he said.

One of his earliest ideas was for a high-speed transcontinental train that ran in a vacuum tunnel and was suspended by magnetic forces ? he was eight or nine years old.

Cooper was hired by Motorola in 1954 after four years with the US Navy as a submarine officer and a year at a telecommunications company. He stayed at Motorola for nearly 30 years, overseeing the commercialization of the first cell phone.

Cooper believes the next big advancement in the wireless industry will be wide-area, high-speed access to the Internet.

And, to do so, he is serving as chairman and chief executive of privately held San Jose, California-based ArrayComm, which developed a technology that does just that.