Introduction
To begin with, let us mention that nowadays people do not imagine life without a cell phone. For us it is no more a wonder of engineering, but a usual means of communication and it is more likely that a person without a cell phone will be considered an odd person.
It should be mentioned that the idea of person-to-person wireless communication is not new.
In 1901 Prof. William Ayrton predicted: “a time when if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a loud, electromagnetic voice, heard by him who had the electromagnetic ear, silent to him who had it not” (Hamill and Lasen 4).
Main Body
The popularity of cell phones
“The telephone is generally acknowledged to have been invented by the Scottish-Canadian Alexander Bell working in Boston in 1876” (Noll 32). Thus, we have an opportunity to communicate at distance for more than a century already, but mobile phone communication became especially popular and widespread not more than a decade ago and today we can hardly imagine our life without it. What makes it so popular? The answer to this question is evident: a cell phone does not require any special skill to use it; even children can speak on the cell phone. At the same time, in comparison with other ways of indirect communication, such as, for instance, mail or even e-mail, cell phones are much more convenient, for they can transfer human voice. And it is evident, that communication by means of voice only maybe sometimes much more pleasant and useful than even face-to-face communication.
It must be mentioned that cell phone has some more names: cellular phone, mobile phone, wireless phone or handset. Still, all of them stand for a device that usually has “a monochrome or color screen display, a built-in antenna and a key-pad” (Zheng and Ni 32).
Cell phones of the first generation
It will be interesting to mention that the first cell phone was made by Dr. Martin Cooper, who worked as an engineer at Motorola at that time. So, the historic date in the development of cell phones was April 13, 1978, when Martin Cooper made a first phone call using the first cell phone, the Motorola DynaTac, when he was walking along a street in New York (Zheng and Ni 32). It is not difficult to guess that visually this first mobile telephone looked like a brick, and it was rather heavy and needed charging very often. This is why it could be called “movable”, but not “mobile”. Such were the cell phones of the first generation.
Cell phones of the second generation
Speaking about mobile phones that belong to the second generation, such digital cellular systems as GSM, cdmaOne and TDMA must be mentioned (Zheng and Ni 32). Due to high technologies these phones are very light and comparatively small, they provide long talk time. These phones are also equipped with LCD screen display, which can show phone numbers, messages etc. “Clamshell” phones, which had a screen display on the back of the cover pane, became to appear after palm-like phones (Zheng and Ni 32).
Nowadays cell phones are equipped with brightly colored screens. They have a lot of additional functions, such as synchronization with computers; moreover, they are equipped with IrDA, Bluetooth.
Smartphone
Finally, smartphones that were developed in late 1990s should be mentioned. These devices are equipped with the latest mobile processors such as Intel XScale and they are characterized by high-resolution color LCD screens and impressive memory capacities (Zheng and Ni 32). A smartphone may be used as a music player or it can function as a digital camera and computer as well.
Conclusion
Drawing a conclusion, let us say that phones and cell phones have changed greatly in the course of their development. Moreover, technical revolution is even more promising. We cannot even imagine the way a cell phone will look in some ten or twenty years.
Works Cited
Hamill, Lynne, and Amparo Lasen. Mobile World: Past, Present and Future. USA: Springer, 2005.
Noll, Michael A. The Evolution of Media. USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
Zheng, Pei, and Lionel M. Ni. Smart Phone and the Next Generation Mobile Computing. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2006.