What was the first all transistor mobile telephone?
From Geoff Fors (internal link): “This is a hard subject to define. The first all solid state mobile telephone from a ‘mainstream’ manufacturer was the UHF T-1414 ‘Mark 12’ from Motorola, part of the MK UHF Improved Mobile Telephone System which was offered about 1969. GE phones had vacuum tubes in the transmitters through about 1972. RCA offered a ‘RCC’ or radio common carrier version of their 700 series solid state radios about 1971 but never made an IMTS or a Bell System radio for some reason.” “Briefcase telephones were all transistor but I don’t recall them appearing until the mid 1970’s. I also recall that there were a couple of tiny firms that made MTS (and later IMTS) phones which appear to have been solid state but they are so rare that I have never found any. One of these was ‘Astronautics’ which made a mobile phone with a modified Automatic Electric ‘Starlite’ princess-style control head. S/C/M (Smith Corona) was also involved in briefcase and mobile phone manufacture in the
