Happy 25th Anniversary Wishes Cell Phone
Happy anniversary to the cellular phone! Well, now they're called cell phones and they look much different than the first one that was used 25 years ago this week.
According to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this week marks 25 years since the first commercial cell phone call was placed in the U.S. Bob Barnett, who was then president of Ameritech Mobile Communications, placed the first commercial wireless call from inside his convertible at Soldier Field in Chicago, to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, who was in Berlin, Germany. Oddly, none of the journals reporting on the event at the time named Bell's grandson.
The cellular breakthrough took a long time coming, as any good thing does. Ten years earlier, Martin Cooper, noted as the inventor of the cell phone, made a demonstration phone call to Joel Engel while in New York City. At the time, Cooper was general manager of Motorola's communications systems division; Engel was his counterpart at AT&T. But it took until 1983 for the FCC approve mobile phones, the newspaper said.
The first cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, weighed 28 ounces (therefore it was fondly nicknamed, "the brick") and had a retail price of $3,995.
In 1987 some people had car phones, console-based devices that gave the driver the unprecedented ability to conduct business while driving. Not that different than today, except that most people jabbering on the cell phone while driving today are most likely not doing business. But a phone that was truly wireless, in 1987, was a billionaire's toy.
With more than 262 million wireless users in the U.S. today, the mobile industry's annual revenue averages more than $140 billion. A generation has grown up using cell phones, often inquiring about what that device is that is connected to the wall by a chord (hint: it's a land-line phone).
Increasing numbers of consumers are using mobile phones exclusively, going without the earlier land-line phones.
And, instead of lugging around a 2-pound brick, which at the time could have been a stand-in for a dumbbell, cell phones now weigh less than 3 ounces.
I remember back in the 1970s seeing a futuristic show on television that said that one day a person speaking on the phone would be able to see the person they are speaking to. Funny, that technology is now here.
So, as the cell phone celebrates its 25th anniversary, I wonder: What will the next 25 years bring?