From the 'brick' to the Razr

They changed the world -- in about 13 weeks.

About 35 years ago, a team of Motorola Inc. engineers and others created the first portable cell phone called the DynaTAC. It was affectionately known as "The Brick" because it felt like one: 2 pounds, 9 inches long, boxy shape. At a cost of just under $4,000, it could make a dozen 3-minute calls.

Since then, billions of designer mobile phones weighing just ounces have transformed the way society communicates.

On Wednesday, the DynaTAC team will be honored for the first time at a ceremony in Chicago hosted by GlobalSpec, a search engine for the engineering profession.

"If we don't make products that help people, then we've failed," said Marty Cooper, former Motorola director of research and development who formed the DynaTAC team.

Race for the phone

In 1972, Cooper started shaping his vision. He already knew the Federal Communications Commission was issuing more radio frequency spectrum. But how could it be used more efficiently and creatively?

"I always believed we could develop a working cell system with a personal phone," Cooper said from his San Jose, Calif., home. "We had to demonstrate that the world was ready for a personal phone and that others could do it, not just AT&T."

The rivalry began between the giant phone company, which had hundreds of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and the much smaller Motorola Inc., which had only three. The political and business aspects of this system had to work just as well as the technology, thought Cooper.

Something else was at stake, too. "We wanted to show that we were legitimate scientists instead of just a manufacturer," said Don Linder, the retired lead engineer, now 64, living in Kildeer.

"We felt a portable phone could be very useful, especially to public service people, like the police department, We just put two and two together."

While research engineers would have loved a couple of years to work on this phone project, time was not a luxury, said Linder.

"We had just a few days to get some ideas together and get a bunch of people to do the parts and to make it work," said Linder. "There was a lot of stress, a lot of tension."

Some of the first tasks were to complete a series of technology tests and proposals before the FCC. A major part was a demonstration to members of the FCC and U.S. Congressional staff at the penthouse of the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., said James Mikulski of Deerfield, then manager of the Communications Systems Research Lab at Motorola.

"It was after one of the lunches associated with those presentations that John Mitchell and Marty Cooper decided that to truly distinguish Motorola from AT&T, we would have to develop a plan for a portable cellular radiotelephone system," said Mikulski.

Forming the team

Cooper saw nothing else but that phone. Now, he needed the team to put it together. He first enlisted long-time colleague Rudy Krolopp, now of Lake Zurich. The men had worked together before on other interesting projects, including the first wristwatch pager.

Krolopp then took engineers off of projects around Motorola and told them what they were going to do. Time was short, he told them.

"We knew we had to build the phone and had to build cell sites and have the ability to move from one cell to another," Cooper said. "The challenge was to demonstrate this because we wanted a portable phone and we wanted competition."

Cooper then gathered the group at a restaurant in Schaumburg and discussed their ideas.

"They were all beautiful designs, some were perfect," said Cooper. "But we had to select one and keep it simple, because we had little time."

They chose one and began to work.

The race begins

The FCC soon made allocations of spectrum amenable to Motorola and allowed for two carriers in each market. That enabled Motorola to market to companies other than Bell Telephone and to build a successful business, said Mikulski.

"My role evolved from an individual contributor to a manager of labs headed by people I had recruited to Motorola and personally hired, with whom I have developed very good personal and professional relations," said Mikulski. "That is rewarding."

While the team worked in Schaumburg, Ron Cieslak, now of Roselle, was building DynaTAC's integrated circuits at Motorola's lab in Phoenix.

"Most of the time, I did not make it home for a break," said Cieslak, now 68. "Instead, any free time was spent trying to finish my part of the project, two integrated circuits that were needed to make the telephone portable."

Cieslak worked many 20-hour days.

"I would work until the sun came up, go home and sleep a couple of hours then go back to work, starting all over again," he said.

Cieslak said the team was so busy working, many didn't think about what the product would ultimately mean to society.

"It wasn't clear to me, the ramifications of the product to society at that time," said Cieslak. "I guess if I had been a little more insightful, I would have bought stock, lots and lots of Motorola stock."

Antenna shack vital

Working in a shack away from the main buildings on the Schaumburg campus, Michael Homa, now 62, diligently designed, tested and built some antennas for the prototypes used in the field trials.

"To accurately test antennas, it needs to be done in free space (outside), or as close to it as was practical. And it was winter. In Chicago," said Homa, now of Palm Harbor, Fla. "I don't know how much we were actually told about it -- for security, I think -- but I knew we had a deadline for the field trial, and that it was a phone of some kind."

Homa's division was responsible for the walkie-talkies and vehicular radios used by police, fire and businesses, so it made sense that he worked on DynaTAC.

"When it was finished and the trials over, I don't remember thinking about it," said Homa. "I knew how expensive all the radios were that were built at that division, so I was sure it would never catch on, and if it did, I would never be able to afford one."

When first testing the DynaTAC, Don Linder needed an antenna for the signal generator they were using to simulate the base station transmitter," said Bill Dumke, now of Green Bay, Wis. He was an engineer just a year out of college at that time.

"Being a ham radio operator, I thought immediately of the 'Coat Hanger Ground Plane Antenna' and made one for him out of some tinned buss wire and a coax connector," Dumke said.

Jim Durante, now of Elgin, built the local oscillator chain. He had to fit it in a very small box in about the middle of the radio. He had a very unique method of getting it to fit. He first built the circuit in three dimensions a little larger than the box, said Dumke.

He compressed the circuit in a bench vise until something shorted. Then he separated the wires with a probe and tweezers at the point of the short, and then compressed it again. He continued to do this in all three dimensions until it fit, Dumke said.

"A lot of us called the DynaTAC the Shoe Phone after the shoe phone used by Maxwell Smart in the TV comedy, 'Get Smart,' " said Dumke. "What else could we call it? Nobody had ever done this before."

Changing the world

Bruce Eastmond, now 64, was about 30 when he was recruited to work as an engineer on the DynaTAC.

"Since we did not have an army of people involved, the pace of the effort was, in a word, crazy," said Eastmond, now of Downers Grove. "Many weeks of long days were required to meet the aggressive demonstration deadlines that Marty had set."

One Sunday morning, Eastmond just got out of the shower and was still dripping when he got a call from his boss's boss. "I was still dripping wet in my robe, when my wife told me I had a call from Roy who needed an immediate answer to a question, and dispatched me on a quick trip to New York to solve a problem," said Eastmond.

His devotion, like that of the rest of the team, got the DynaTAC working.

"I certainly did not have any idea how the work we were doing then would change the course of the cellular industry and transform Motorola."

And the world.