CHICAGO – The Wireless History Foundation celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first cellphone call with an evening of festivity featuring a celebrity attendee list similar to what you’d find in People magazine – if People magazine covered the wireless industry.
Look below for pictures from this event.
Industry visionaries past and present – Craig McCaw, Motorola’s Galvin family, CTIA’s Steve Largent and too many others to mention – were among the 500 people packed into the Drake Hotel here last night to reminisce with old friends, honor industry-wide achievements and prepare for the future with the foundation’s coming-out party.
Spearheaded by Arlene Harris, Liz Maxfield and Judith Purcell, the Wireless History Foundation has been working for more than a year to begin to put the pieces into place to record the stories that collectively make up the wireless industry’s dynamic past – and its path going forward.
If last night’s dinner is any indication, the industry can rest assured its accomplishments will be saved for posterity. The people who’ve built the wireless industry have fabulous stories to tell, noted Foundation President Harris.
(Harris has her own pretty spectacular laundry-list of wireless achievements: Her family ran a paging business in Los Angeles; she has already been inducted into the Wireless Hall of Famefor her work connecting people in need of organ transplants with pagers; and today she runs GreatCall, which makes the Jitterbug service.)
In one poignant moment of the evening, Marty Cooper (who invented the handheld cellphone and is Harris’ husband) took a moment to recognize the people “of the Motorola of 30 years ago” who were instrumental in the cellphone industry’s initial success.
In another pretty exceptional moment, I got to shake Craig McCaw’s hand and use the word “femtocell” while talking to McCaw and Rob Mechaley.
(OK that might not really be part of the story but I’m recording my own highlights here for posterity. McCaw said his team launched New York City with nine – count ’em nine – cell sites.)
As part of the initiative, RCR Wireless News has donated its Wireless Hall of Fame program to the foundation, which will manage it. In addition, the foundation plans to develop a Web site to chronicle the evolution of the wireless industry at www.wirelessindustryfoundation.org.
