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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Michael Weissenstein,Chinedu Asadu and Javier Arciga

He pioneered the cellphone. It changed how people around the world talk to each other — and don’t

Mobile Phone Revolution - (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Dick Tracy got an atom-powered two-way wrist radio in 1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it.

The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola’s research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone. Cooper rejected AT&T’s wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with “a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.”

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