CUTTING THE CORD

The cell phone changed the world, yet the story of its creation - and its creator - has never been told.

The cell phone revolutionized how people communicate, freeing them to get in touch with one another at any time and in any place without the constraints of wires. The cell phone led to the creation and growth of new industries. Yet the true story of its creation has not been told. Cutting the Cord tells that story. It centers on a battle for control of how people communicate, involving government regulators, lobbyists, police, technology breakthroughs, failures, quartz, and a horse. At the center of that story is Martin Cooper. This book describes how his early life influenced the creation of the cell phone.

Industry skirmishes became a political war in Washington, a struggle to prevent a monopolistic company from dominating telecommunications. The drama culminates in the first-ever public call made on a handheld, portable telephone - a cell phone. Despite that, the cell phone we know today almost didn't happen.

Without the vision of a small group at Motorola, the last forty years of history would be different. Their story is inspiring and instructive. After a twenty-nine-year career at Motorola, Cooper became an entrepreneur, helping launch companies dedicated to accelerating cell phone adoption.

The story of the cell phone has much to teach about innovation, strategy, and management. This book also relates Cooper's vision of the future of personal communications. That story is far from finished. We have only achieved a small fraction of the cell phone's potential impact.

The cell phone empowers people from all walks of life. It is reshaping how children learn. The ways we work together will soon seem primitive because of continued advances in the cell phone. Most of all, the cell phone will transform medicine and healthcare, contributing to the eradication of disease, elimination of poverty, extension of life, and close coupling of human and artificial intelligence.

Martin Cooper is an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist. He led the creation of the world's first cell phone at Motorolaand made the first public call on it. Over nearly three decades at Motorola, Cooper contributed to the development of pagers, two-way radio dispatch systems, quartz crystal manufacture, and more. A serial entrepreneur, he and his wife Arlene Harris have cofounded numerous wireless technology companies, including Cellular Business Systems, SOS Wireless Communications, GreatCall, and ArrayComm. Cooper is currently chairman of Dyna LLC and a member of the FCC's Technological Advisory Council. He was the first to observe the Law of Spectrum Capacity, which became known as Cooper's Law.
In 2013, Cooper became a member of the National Academy of Engineering from whom he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. He was awarded the Marconi Prize "for being a wireless visionary who reshaped the concept of mobile communication." He has been inducted into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame and Wireless History Foundation's Wireless Hall of Fame. The Radio Club of America awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. He is a lifetime member of the IEEE, was president of its Vehicular Technology Society and received its Centennial Medal. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the "100 Best Inventors in History." He is a Prince of Asturias Laureate.