Happy 40th Birthday to the Cell Phone

Readwrite mobile says that the very first cell phone call was placed 40 years ago today by Motorola Division Manager Martin Cooper. It was not until many years later – March 6, 1983, that it went on sale.

We now take our cellphones for granted – but what a difference a few decades make. The original Motorola DynaTAC sold for $3,995 ($9209 in today’s dollars) was 10 inches high (plus the antenna), and weighed 1 3/4 pounds. And of course it could only make phone calls. The smartphones we throw in our pockets today have more computing power than a multi-million dollar, room filling supercomputer did at that time.