Before 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones that were equipped in cars and other vehicles. Motorola was the very first company to develop a handheld mobile phone. On April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival. Thie prototype handheld phone he used weighed 2.4 lb and measured 9.1 by 5.1 by 1.8 in. It boasted a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge. Read more for another video explaining why it was an epic troll, along with a bonus clip.
John F. Mitchell, Motorola’s chief of portable communication products and Cooper’s boss in 1973, played a major role in advancing the development of handheld mobile telephone equipment. Unfortunately, he failed to push Motorola into developing wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.
