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The year was 1973. Joel Engel, an American engineer who had worked on Nasa's Apollo programme, was leading an effort to create the world's first handheld mobile phone. Research at Bell Labs, where Engel worked, had several decades earlier contributed to the development of clunky, car-phones that allowed calls to be made on the move. His team were now trying to take the technology a step further – a device that could be carried around everywhere. On 3 April, however, the landline in Engel's laboratory rang. He picked up. "Hi, Joel," said the voice at the other end of the line. It was Martin 'Marty' Cooper, the leader of a rival research group at a radio and electronics company called Motorola. "I'm calling you on a cellphone, but a real cellphone," Cooper said. "A personal, handheld, portable cellphone." The race was won, and in some style. Standing in front of reporters and photographers, Cooper had made the call from in front of the Hilton Midtown hotel on New York's Sixth Avenue – around 30 miles (48km) from Bell Labs in New Jersey where Engel stood silently on the other end. Soon it would be possible to hold conversations with another person – and even multiple people at once – from anywhere at any time. The ability to beam short text messages, and later pictures and eventually emojis, would then follow. But while mobile phones transformed the way our species communicates with one another, it barely scratches the surface of what they have enabled. |
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Recent years have seen the dialogue around vaccines devolve into a highly contentious, emotionally fraught firestorm, an ongoing collision between scientists and charlatans, truth and lies. Virulent: The Vaccine War is an invitation to think again, exposing the myths and laying bare the facts about vaccine science, its history, and what it will take to eradicate the world’s most deadly diseases. |
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At the end of this week, states will begin to sever an anticipated 15 million low-income Americans from Medicaid rolls that ballooned to record heights because of a pandemic-era promise that people with the health insurance could keep it — a federal promise that is going away. |
