So what did people do before the cell phone? They got along fine just as they did before the calculator, the CD player and the computer.

The Wireless Advisor Glossary defines “cellular” as; “A type of wireless communication that is most familiar to mobile phone users. It is called ?cellular? because the system uses many base stations to divide a service area into multiple ?cells.? Cellular calls are transferred from base station to base station as a user travels from cell to cell.” These base stations are also referred to as “towers” or “monopoles.”

According to the www.inventors.about.com Web site, “The demand for a cell phone was almost instantaneous from the day the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) authorized commercial cellular use for the USA in 1982. “Consumer demand quickly outstripped the 1982 system standards. By 1987, cellular telephone subscribers exceeded one million and the airways were crowded.”

The concept for the cell phone originated in1947 with a group of researchers that wanted to improve on the crude mobile (car) phone.

They realized that by putting together small “cells,” range of service area, they could increase the frequency and capacity of mobile phone use. That same year AT&T, “proposed that the FCC allocate a large number of radio-spectrum frequencies so that widespread mobile telephone service would become feasible and AT&T would have incentive to research the new technology,” according to Inventors.

However, the FCC decided to limit the use of frequencies and didn?t reconsider until1968. According to Inventors, “AT&T and Bell Labs proposed a cellular system to the FCC of many small, low-powered, broadcast towers, each covering a ?cell? a few miles in radius and collectively covering a larger area. Each tower would use only a few of the total frequencies allocated to the system. As the phones traveled across the area, calls would be passed from tower to tower.”