Cellphones Turns 40 (happy B-day)

On April 3, 1973, a Motorola employee named Martin Cooper strolled out onto New York's Sixth Avenue with an oddly-shaped plastic brick in his hand. He pressed a few buttons, puzzled onlookers by holding the device to his ear, and placed the world's first ever cell phone call to Joel Engel, the head of research at Bell Labs. Cooper told his chief rival that, yes, Motorola had successfully engineered the world's first cell phone. History: Made.

The humble cell phone turns 40 today, having fundamentally changed the lives of six billion global phone owners and counting.

Few among us would prefer to return to a time of corded phones, but the impact of the cell phone on our behavior and quality of life hasn’t all been positive.