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.
