Mobile Phones
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he brought about a revolution that changed the way people communicate. The new device enabled people to talk to each other from a great distance as clearly as if they were in the same room.
Over the last two decades a new means of spoken communication has emerged: the mobile phone. It is a more complex version of the two-way radio but free from its drawbacks.
With the traditional two-way radio, users had to stay within the range of each other’s broadcast area because as soon as they moved out of it, the signal was lost. With the traditional two-way radio the main advantage of wireless handsets was lost too.
In the 1940s, researchers had the idea of creating a network using a series of radio masts, placed across an extended area to pick up signals from two-way radios. In this way callers would always be within range of one of the masts; when they moved too far away from one mast, the signal would be picked up by another mast. The reception area of each mast was referred to as cell; this is why in many countries - notably in the USA and Italy - mobile phones are called “cell phones”.
However, in the 1940s mobile phones were very expensive, enormous and hardly portable.
The real mobile phone was invented in 1973 by Dr Martin Cooper who tested it by calling his rival to tell him about his new invention.
The first mobile phones were introduced by Motorola in the 1980s. These were very expensive - over €.3.000 - and very heavy - over a kilo - . By and by they have become cheaper and smaller and so affordable.
Mobile phones brought about a drastic change in our life styles. With mobile phones people have become reachable round the clock, if not by voice call at least by SMS - Short Messaging Service - , a system that enables users to send and receive short text messages.
In 1994 the first smartphone appeared. It was produced by IBM and BellSouth. Although the IBM Simon Personal Communicator was still rudimental, it had a touch screen and PDA features, it allowed the user to receive and send email and send faxes.
Today smartphones offer a variety of services that was unimaginable only a few years back: web browser, MP3 player, Bluetooth, digital camera, onscreen keyboard, voice dealing, character recognition, voice recording, GPS, and many others.
The Internet has become an indispensable tool in our society: more and more we need to have access to the Internet, anytime anywhere and smartphones meet this need, offering us the world at our fingertips.