This week on Full Frame: Innovations that changed the world

Full Frame

Mike Walter and Martin CooperInnovator Martin Cooper talks with Mike Walter about the history and future of his invention, the cell phone.

Technology is re-defining our daily lives. From the way we interact with one another to the way we accomplish our work…and play.
And some of these technology innovations have changed the world we live in forever.

We speak with those innovators whose light-bulb moments are history in the making. That’s this week on Full Frame: Innovations that changed the world.

Martin Cooper: Father of the cell phone

Martin Cooper

Innovator Martin Cooper talks about the history and future of his invention, the cell phone.

The one object many of us use, and most would not want to live without, is our cell phone.

In 1973, as the corporate director of Research and Development at Motorola, Martin Cooper led the team of engineers that conceived a truly portable telephone.

And, on April 3, 1973, Martin made the first phone call using a truly portable device.

Since then, mobile phones have changed the way people live all around the world.

In 2014, the number of mobile subscriptions, worldwide, exceeded the human population at 7.22 billion.

Innovator Martin Cooper joins Mike Walter in our Los Angeles studios to talk about the history and future of cell phones.

Follow Martin on Twitter: @MartinCooper

Ting Shih: Inventing life-saving technology

Ting Shih

Ting Shih, founder and CEO of ClickMedix, discusses new life-changing technology.

Ting Shih is the founder and CEO of ClickMedix, a software technology that allows patients and healthcare workers to get consultations from specialists via a mobile phone app.

Thanks to the worldwide rise of mobile phone access and technology, ClickMedix connects patients in some of the world’s most remote regions to the much-needed expertise of healthcare workers, physicians, and specialists – often thousands of kilometers away.

Now, through her mobile technology, Ting Shih wants to improve the lives of a billion people by giving them one-click access to healthcare. Among her many awards and accolades, Ting was recently named the 2015 Toyota Mother of Invention. She holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a master’s in Systems Engineering from MIT.

Ting Shih sits down with Mike Walter in our Washington, DC studio to discuss the vision behind her life-changing and often life-saving technology.

Follow Ting on Twitter: @TingShih

Allen Blue: Reinventing social networking

Allen Blue

LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue discusses how the professional online network plans to change the way business is run.

Before he helped create the world’s largest online professional networking site, Allen Blue lectured on theatrical scenery and lighting design at Stanford University, designed marketing programs at PayPal and was a self-employed web designer. Now, as co-founder of LinkedIn, an online professional network with more than 350 million users, Allen knows a thing or two about job searching.

LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals, online, adding two new users per second. It’s used by people all around the world – in 200 countries and territories.

The platform has also changed the way employers screen candidates as job seekers connect with new opportunities – proving, once and for all, it really is all about “who you know” in the world.

Mike Walter recently sat down with LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue at the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival to learn about the behind-the-scenes challenges faced by the world’s largest professional network and how it plans to change the way we do business.

Follow Allen on Twitter: @AllenBlue

Nader Khalili: Designing a Dream House

Nader Khalili

The late architect Nader Khalili

Nader Khalili created the Superadobe building system, a technique that builds structures using only sandbags, barbed wire and earth. The buildings not only provide low-cost shelter, but they are also fire, earthquake, tornado and hurricane-proof.

While Khalili passed away seven years ago at the age of 72, his quest to empower the world’s poor, by teaching them how to build homes using inexpensive resources, lives on. Khalili was founder and director of the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, known as Cal-Earth, where his building technique was developed and continues to be taught to others.

With the increased rate of natural disasters around the world, the Cal-Earth structures have proven to be more resistant to catastrophes. After the 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Nepal earlier this year, an orphanage in the Kathmandu valley, which was built from Cal-Earth’s designs, remained intact.

And, more than 40 Cal-Earth domes that were built in 2006 in Nepal withstood the disaster – saving the lives of more than 90 children and their caretakers.

On this week’s Close Up, Full Frame takes a look at the life-saving building technology of Nader Khalili.

Follow Cal-Earth on Twitter: @Cal-Earth

Tune into Full Frame on CCTV America at 7:00 pm ET on September 12, 2015.