How are modern cellphones the technological descendants of the old military field phones?

Question

I read once that the basic technology for the modern cellphone actually was invented decades ago but the patents expired before the inventor could make any money. Apparently cellphones are the great-grandchildren of that phone-in-a-box you always saw Cpl. Radar using on the MASH television show. My question is how was the technology adapted? How did something from the 1940s become a 21st century necessity?

Answer 1

You haven't made the right connection.

Cell phone and satellite phones are different technology. The satellite phone uses one satellite as a relay just like the satellite TV broadcasts that were first seen on the news in the 1960s. Cell Phones are simple radios.

The patent you are talking about was U.S. patent, Patent Number 887357 for a wireless telephone, issued 1908 to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky for a wireless phone to be used in caves and mines. It wasn't until the 1980s that the first cell phone networks using that old technology were established.

It took a few other key developments and those were patented as well to finally create the cell phone we know today. The Bell Labs created the "hand off" feature that allows you to switch between cell phone towers and Motorola is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting.

The cell phone does not equal the phone that Radar used on MASH; that was an US Army Field Phone and it is connected by wires through a switchboard just like your land line phone. The Army Filed Phone is portable, but otherwise identical.

Cell Phones are actually small radios.

The technology that makes a cell phone work is the combination of the phone/short range radios and the towers.

A cell phone network is a series of towers that receive short range radio signals generated by cell phones. They then send those signals into the standard telephone system and if another cell phone is being called then the call is transmitted by a cell phone tower to the receiving cell phone.

The military did have radios and those radios are the ancestors of the cell phone. The difference between the two is the radio frequencies used. The Federal Communication Commission reserves certain radio frequencies for specific traffic. Airports, police, fire departments, the military and cell phones all have their own reserved frequencies that they use. They also have to share the radio spectrum with standard radio signals and TV signals who have their own reserved frequencies.

If you took a 1950s era phone and pulled all the wires out of the ground while keeping the phone lines connected then you would have the exact same system that Radar O'Riley used on the TV series MASH. When he turns the crank he is turning a generator that sends a signal down the line to ring the phone on the other end. When he talked with Sparky he was talking with the switchboard operator who would plug his line into another line to talk with I-Corp, Japan, or even stateside. It was a standard telephone system, not a cell phone.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone
"There is one U.S. patent, Patent Number 887357 for a wireless telephone, issued 1908 to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. He applied this to "cave radio" telephones and not directly to cellular telephony as we know it today. However, the introduction of cells for mobile phone base stations, invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T, was further developed by Bell Labs during the 1960s. Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while hand-held cellular radio devices have been available since 1983. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony."

For more like the Bell patents read the rest of the article.

PS. Sparky was a common nickname given to the person who worked in the Radio Shack. Radar was given his nickname because he always was the first one to know when the choppers were coming in carrying wounded. It may have been good ears or it may have been a 6th sense the original movie and TV series never explored that. Also Radar was the only cast member to go from the movie to the TV series.

Answer 2

The first cellular phone (ie a phone that automatically switched to a new ground station) was installed and tested on a train by Bell Labs in the US northeast corridor in the 60s. The basic idea was outlined in 1947!

Cell phones don't use satellites. Motorola developed the first prototype hand held cell phone from scratch in the early 70s.

Don't worry, Motorola made PLENTY of money from cell phones.

Answer 3

Miltary people always like to dream that.
But, we always need to remind the idiots
that cell phones are the direct descendent
of sattelite technology, not anything to do
with Jeeps and 1940.

Well, that should really be ammended to
that no phones are really related to sattelites.
It's just that Motorala was silly enough to
believe that Chicago was related to science.

Answer 4

Two way radio systems sums it up nicely for me.

Communications at the spead of radio beams

From telegraph to a wired phone system to radio communication to sattelite communications.