Happy Birthday to the Mobile Phone!
The beast over to the right there is the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which received approval from authorities exactly 25 years ago. It would have set you back US$3,995 at the time and it weighed 1.75 pounds. To give you some frame of reference, that’s the same weight as 5.3 human kidneys, 14 tennis balls, or 6.2 iPhones.
The first private mobile phone call was made by Bob Barnett, former president of Ameritech Mobile Communications. From inside a Chrysler convertible, he called the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who was in Germany at the time. No word on what the roaming charges were at the time, but the service cost US$50 a month, plus 40 cents a minute peak call charges, or 24 cents per minute off-peak.
(via the Inquirer)
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