Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first modern portable handset. Cooper made the first call on a portable cell phone in April 1973. He made the call to his rival, Joel Engel, Bell Labs head of research. Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947 with the police car technology. AT& had T patented the concept of the portable phone system in 1947. However, Motorola was the first to incorporate the technology into a portable device that was designed for outside of a automobile use.
