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Originally Posted by Calgary_Girl
Martin Cooper, who invented the cell phone....
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I have to laugh/cry every time I read that Marty Cooper '
invented the cell phone', or the 'portable cell phone'.
Complex products like that are 'developed', not 'invented' and certainly not by a single person. Bell Labs was working on the concepts decades before the technology was even feasible, because they knew that one day the technology would be there, so they started planning/researching for that day.
I think a PR machine just wanted to have a name to associate with the device so that someone was the 'face' of the product to the public.
The first paragraph in wiki has it about right I'd say (bold mine):
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... who in the 1970s led the team that developed the handheld mobile phone
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But later they say:
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Cooper is considered the inventor of the first handheld cellular phone
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Well, he may be 'considered' the inventor, but I think the first statement is more accurate.
-ERD50