Mobile phone 25 years old today

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was built by a team headed by Dr. Martin Cooper, a general manager for the systems division at Motorola, and he is widely creditied with making the first mobile phone call.

However, for publicity purposes the first call was made on Soldier Field in Chicago. Bob Barnett, president of Ameritech Mobile Communications (now Verizon Wireless), called the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell.

The DynaTAC 8000X was ten inches tall, with a two inch flexible aerial, and weighted around 800 grams. Its red LED screen displayed the number called and SMS wasn’t included.

It cost $3,995, with a $50 per month service call and calls cost 40 cents a minute at peak hours and 24 cents a minute at off-peak times.

Despite the high price 12,000 subscribers within a year and today over a billion people use mobile phones.

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