The Cell Phone Turns 40!
We really do take them for granted and how they changed our world. From land lines, to pagers, to the "brick" and now smartphones. The world's first mobile phone call was made this week in 1973 by Motorola employee Martin Cooper from the streets of New York City.
The phone he called on was a prototype Motorola DynaTAC which, a decade later, was to become the world's first commercially available mobile handset. It got the FCC's thumbs up in 1983 and launched in 1984 at a cost of $3,995 -- which is about $9,000 today.
Now, with nearly two-million mobile phone towers and antennas in the U.S., you'd expect to see one on every street corner. Now you dont even see them as they are often disguised. In urban areas, clever engineers have developed ways to install the equipment into signs, clock faces, drainpipes, telephone poles, church and catherdral roofs and even weather vanes.
Look how big these are!