He pioneered the cellphone: It changed how people around the world talk to each other

Dick Tracy got an atom-powered two-way wrist radio in1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it.

- By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, CHINEDU ASADU and JAVIER ARCIGA

The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola’s research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone. Cooper rejected AT&T’s wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with “a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.”

Fifty-two years ago, Cooper declared victory in a call from a Manhattan sidewalk to the head of AT&T’s rival program. His four-pound DynaTAC 8000X has evolved into a global population of billions of smartphones weighing mere ounces a piece. Some 4.6 billion people — nearly 60 percent of the world — have mobile internet, according to a global association of mobile network operators.