The mobile phone celebrates 40 years

40 years ago today the first mobile phone call was made on April the 3rd 1973. The first call was made by Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola who called a rival colleague at another telecoms company to tell him that he  was speaking from “a real cellular telephone”. To make the call, he used a DynaTAX 8000X, Motorola’s first handheld cell phone which cost $3,500 launched in 1983 (pictured below).

Cooper, the man behind the first mobile phone call recently told an audience in London: “It pleases me no end to have had some small impact on people’s lives because these phones do make people’s lives better. They promote productivity, they make people more comfortable, they make them feel safe and all of those things.”

“We did envision that some day the phone would be so small that you could hang it on your ear or even have it embedded under your skin.”

Prophetic thinking as the Apple Smartwatch and Project Glass get closer to reality.