Vintage Chicago Tribune: Dick Tracy and ‘handie-talkie’ paved way for Motorola’s first cellphone call in 1973

The very first cellular telephone call took place 50 years ago this week, Chicago.

And though it happened on a street in New York City, the DynaTAC (Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) prototype was designed and built in the Chicago area. (Visit the Chicago History Museum to get a closer look at a later version of the brick-shaped handset.)

This innovation was part of a technological evolution that was inspired by comic strip detective Dick Tracy’s wrist phone — according to former Motorola executive Martin Cooper, who made that first call — and predated by the company’s “handie-talkie” walkie-talkie and a two-way radio portable radio custom-built for Chicago police.

So the next time you use your smartphone, don’t forget its Chicago roots — and be thankful it’s significantly smaller than the 2.5-pound, 10-inch long original cellphone.

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Oct. 4, 1931: ‘Dick Tracy’ comic strip debuted. Soon kids everywhere — including the future ‘father of the cellphone’ — wanted the fictional detective’s two-way wrist radio.

Creator Chester Gould initially called his comic detective “Plainclothes Tracy.” Read more here.

• Vintage Chicago Tribune: Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and the rise of newspaper comics

1940s: ‘Handi-talkie’ signaled birth of commercial radio telecommunications industry

In 1947 the company, which had since its founding in 1928 been known as the Galvin Manufacturing Corp., changed its name to Motorola Inc. — a name company founder Paul Galvin had given the car radios his company made — and introduced the first commercially available portable two-way radios, the 250 milliwatt “handie-talkie” radiophone. Read more here.

1960s: Motorola created a portable two-way radio for Chicago police

The 4-inch by 10-inch radio could be used in and, for the first time, outside an officer’s car. Read more here.

April 3, 1973: Motorola executive Martin Cooper made first cellphone call

Like skyscrapers, improv comedy or even a good hot dog, the cellphone was born in Chicago but quickly claimed by New York City as its own. Cooper was standing on Sixth Avenue just blocks from Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on April 3, 1973 when he dialed his Chicago-built cellphone prototype. Read more here.

• Original Tribune story from April 4, 1973: Soon you can make calls on the portable phone “while riding in a taxicab or bus, walking down the street, sitting in a theater or other building, or shopping.”

Oct. 13, 1983: Chicago went cellular

A bunch of grown men ran a race to determine who would be the country’s first commercial mobile cellphone customer. The event at Soldier Field included play-by-play by former Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse. Read more here.

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Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com.