Today is the Cellphone’s 40th Birthday

The first time I ever used a cellphone was in the early '90s.  It was a bag phone the size of my head.  Five years later, I was using a cellphone that I could have possibly swallowed.  But what I didn't know was that when I first used that bag phone, cellphones were already 20 years old.

Mind.  Blown.

Gizmodo reports that the very first usage of a cellphone happened on this day in 1973, believe it or not.  When it went on sale, the Motorola DynaTAC cost $4,000 (which would be around $9,000 in today's dollars).

An engineer from Motorola named Marty Cooper made that first call.  And the way he did it was actually pretty ballsy:

From midtown Manhattan, Marty called Joel Engel, then the head of rival research department Bell Labs. When Joel picked up, Marty uttered something rather unexpected: "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cellphone, a real handheld portable cellphone."

--Gizmodo

Reportedly, there was no response from Engel.  Because what do you say when your rival calls you up to tell you how you just lost the race?  Yikes.