Time Out From Texas Instruments
"In1954, Texas Instruments was the first company to start commercial production of silicon transistors instead of using germanium. Silicon raised the power output while lowering operating temperatures, enabling the miniaturization of electronics. The first commercial transistor radio was also produced in 1954 - powered by TI silicon transistors." Photo courtesy of Texas Instruments: http://www.ti.com/ (external link)
In 1956 AT&T and the United States Justice Department settled, for a while, another anti-monopoly suit. AT&T agreed not to expand their business beyond telephones and transmitting information. Bell Laboratories and Western Electric would not enter such fields as computers and business machines. The Bell System in return was left intact with a reprieve from monopoly scrutiny for a few years. This affected wireless as well. Bell and WECO previously supplied radio equipment and systems to private and public concerns. No longer. Western Electric Company stopped making radio-telephone sets. Outside contractors using Bell System specs would make AT&T's next generation of radio-telephone equipment. Companies like Motorola, Secode, and ITT-Kellog, now CORTELCO. Also in 1956 the Bell System began providing manual radio-telephone service at 450 MHz, a new frequency band assigned to relieve overcrowding. AT&T did not automate this service until 1969.
In this same year Motorola produces its first commerical transistorized product: an automobile radio. "It is smaller and more durable than previous models, and demands less power from a car battery. An all-transistor auto radio, [it] is considered the most reliable in the industry." [Motorola (external link)]
In 1958 the innovative Richmond Radiotelephone Company improved their automatic dialing system. They added new features to it, including direct mobile to mobile communications. [McDonald2] Other independent telephone companies and the Radio Common Carriers made similar advances to mobile-telephony throughout the 1950s and 1960s. If this subject interests you, The Independent Radio Engineer Transactions on Vehicle Communications, later renamed the IEEE Transactions on Vehicle Communications, is the publication to read during these years.
Mobile Phone Stuff! (1) Service cost and per-minute charges table / (2) Product literature photos / (3) Briefcase Model Phone / (4) More info on the briefcase model / (5) MTS and IMTS history / (6) Bell System (7) Outline of IMTS / (8) Land Mobile Page 1 (375K) / (9) Land Mobile Page Two (375K)
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Resources
Bullington, Kenneth "Frequency Economy in Mobile Radio Bands." Bell System Technical Journal, January 1953, Volume 32: 42 et. seq.
Douglas, V.A. "The MJ Mobile Radio Telephone System." Bell Laboratories Record December, 1964: 383
Gibson, Stephen W., Cellular Mobile Radiotelephones. Englewood Cliff: Prentice Hall, 1987. 8
McDonald, Ramsey "'Dial Direct'" Automatic Radiotelephone System. IRE Transactions on Vehicle Communications July, 1958: 80 (back to text) As a courtesy to researchers I have scanned this article for you to download and review. These are very large files but they are readable and with some work will be decent for OCR. The first image is the title page for the IRE Transactions publication. The article starts at page 80:
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[McDonald2] ibid. 84
O'Brien, James "Final Tests Begin for Mobile Telephone System." Bell Laboratories Record July/August, 1978: 171
[SRI1] David Roessner, Robert Carr, Irwin Feller, Michael McGeary, and Nils Newman, "The Role of NSF's Support of Engineering in Enabling Technological Innovation: Phase II Final report to the National Science Foundation. Arlington, VA: SRI International, 1998.
[SRI2] ibid.
Young, W.R. "Advanced Mobile Phone Service: Introduction, Background, and Objectives." Bell System Technical Journal January, 1979: 7 (back to text) Messrs. Carr. Feller, McGeary, and Newman, of SRI, supra, cite the original memo describing cellular as follows: "Mobile Telephony -- Wide Area Coverage" Bell Laboratories Technical Memorandum, December 11, 1947.
[Discussion] Some might say conventional mobile telephones already employ frequency reuse since the same frequencies are used in radio-telephone service some distance away, in other cities perhaps seventy miles or more distant. Broadcast radio and television stations use this same approach to prevent interference, where the same frequencies are used throughout the country and where each station is separated by distance or space. In cellular, though, frequency reuse goes on within the fixed wide area of a cellular carrier, as part of an overall operating system. Within the coverage area of an AM or FM radio station, by comparison, no other station can use the frequency of that station. And there is no connection between other stations to act as a network.