Top 96 Quotes & Sayings by Martin Cooper

The technology that lets many people use the same radio channel at the same time is called smart antenna technology or adaptive array technology or interference mitigation. This technology uses computer processors to take the signals from multiple antennas at each location and sorts the various signals out so they don't interfere with each other.

Privacy is a thing of the past.

I'm always trying whatever the latest telephone is.

I never really started to carry a cellular phone until it was small enough so I could put it on my belt and not even feel it was there.

I don't want to be the oldest anything in America. Sorry about that.

If you want people to think out of the box, you shouldn't create the box in the first place.

We had no idea that things like Facebook and Twitter, and all these other concepts, would ever happen.

My favourite example of good technology is the automobile. I travel all over the world and if I want to drive a car anywhere, I get in and put the key in the ignition, shift out of park and drive. I don't need an instruction manual.

Just remember, in 1973, we had no digital cameras, no personal computers, no Internet. The thought of putting a billion transistors in a cell phone was ludicrous.

I do like to get away from technology. I still read a lot. Having said that, most of my reading is on computers or a Kindle or an iPad.

The more we learn about new communications, the more capacity we need, and that is going to keep going on forever. That's been happening since radio was invented, and that's going to keep going.

Yes, I was the one people credit with inventing the cell phone. Now, whenever anyone gets a dropped call, they blame me.

The notion that there's finite spectrum is mostly wrong.

Every two and a half years, every spectrum crisis has gotten solved, and that's going to keep happening.

There are all kinds of features that will become part of cell phones that will help us offload the more laborious things of life and let us focus on doing the things humans do well, like abstract thinking and creating.

I had an iPhone for a while, I gave that to my grandson. Kids are really caught up in that.

Cellular was the forerunner to true wireless communications.

People thought I was crazy thinking about a phone you can just put in your pocket.

The public doesn't adopt radical concepts very quickly.

Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire.

You have to immerse yourself into a product and use it in order to really understand it and that's why I have a new cellphone every month or two.

I think an engineer has not matured until he or she has conceived of a product and participated in every stage of bringing it to fruition, if that makes sense. And not many engineers get to do all of those stages.

Good technology is intuitive - the cellphone forces you to become an engineer.

The best technology is when you are free to do what you want.

I think young people don't appreciate that when you're in your 70s, you'll lose patience for techie stuff and you may decide that you want a simple device.

Technology has to be invisible. Transparent. Just simple.

The future of cellular telephony is to make people's lives better - the most important way, in my view, will be the opportunity to revolutionise healthcare.

I think what's really going to happen is we're going to have a lot of different kinds of phones when our industry grows up - some that are just plain, simple telephones. In fact, my wife and I started a company, and she designed the Jitterbug, which is just a simple telephone.

A telephone number shouldn't represent a home or a car or a restaurant, but instead a person.

The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo, and you could only talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out. Which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer.

I got a Motorola Droid that I use. I also have a Jitterbug.

I only live for the future.

Our dream was that someday nobody would talk on a wired telephone. Everybody would talk on a wireless phone.

I think what is going to happen in the future is more customization, more personalization. We all are different and we ought to be able to customize and have a phone that does exactly what we want it to do - that is so easy to use that we don't even have to think about it. That's what the dream is.

Just suppose that you could do a physical examination, not every year, which people do and which is almost worthless, but every minute, because you're connected, and because we have devices that you can put on your body that measure virtually everything on your body.

It doesn't take a cell phone to make a person rude. There are rude people all over the place. But people are learning. I have never heard a cell phone ring in the movies. We are going to learn how to live with the advantages of new technology.

People are mobile. They move around, and anytime they want to communicate, if you tie them to the wall or the wires, you're restricting them, you're infringing on their freedom.

The first cellular systems didn't become commercially available until 1983. Most of the phones before then were in fact car phones.

We did envision that some day the phone would be so small that you could hang it on your ear or even have it embedded under your skin.

Bell Labs was a fantastic research organization but having them create and market new products for the world was terrible. They were not good marketers and yet it was AT&T engineers who were deciding what the products of the future were.

I have a mantra that people are naturally, fundamentally and inherently mobile.

I wouldn't use a phone with less than a 4-inch screen anymore.

I use Verizon. My wife uses Cingular. I also have an AT&T phone for the car.

Wireless is freedom. It's about being unleashed from the telephone cord and having the ability to be virtually anywhere when you want to be.

You should not be a slave to your telephone. The technology is there to serve you, not the other way around.

What else is there in life but to accomplish things and to do things? Sure I like to be on a beach on occasion, I like to ski on occasion, but as long as I have the ability to make a contribution, I am going to keep going.

It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people's lives because these phones do make people's lives better. They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things.

Just think of what a world it would be if we could measure the characteristics of your body when you get sick and transmit those directly to a doctor or a computer. You could get diagnosed and cured instantly and wirelessly.

The only thing I don't like is being called the 'grandfather of the cellphone' because that makes me a little older than I prefer to be.

The only thing that was in my mind when we made that first phone call was, 'Is it going to work?' We had all these parts hand soldered together, engineers standing by with the soldering iron - just in case.

Of course I have an iPhone and I use that, interestingly enough, mostly for my calendar because it synchronizes with my calendar. I take pictures with it and I show people pictures of my grandchildren.

There is no reason why T-Mobile can't be successful on its own and the only real reason AT&T would want to own T-Mobile is to increase its exclusivity by owning more spectrum.

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones.

If we don't blow ourselves up, this is going to be a really wonderful world.

The instruction manual for my Motorola phone is bigger and heavier than the phone.

What's the biggest function of a cell phone? What does a cell phone do for humanity? It makes people more productive.

The biggest innovation of all is social networking, and cellular technology is the facilitator for social networking. People are mobile; social networking is people, and the only way people connect with each other is wirelessly.

Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem.

The optimum telephone is one that I think some day is gonna be embedded behind your ear. It's gonna have an extraordinarily powerful computer running the cell phone.

When I go skiing, I may carry a phone, but it's there for safety purposes. I'm not one of these guys that reads his email while he's riding up on the chair lift.