The cellphone is 40 years old today
On April 3rd, 1973, Motorola engineer Marty Cooper placed the first public call from a cellphone. In midtown Manhattan, Cooper called Joel Engel — head of rival research department Bell Labs — saying "Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone." The call was placed on a Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, which weighed 2.5 pounds, a far cry from today's 4-ounce handsets.
Last year, The Verge's Chris Ziegler sat down with Marty Cooper to discuss the history of the cellphone, the issues facing the current market, and the future of phones and spectrum. What better way to celebrate the forty-year anniversary of the portable phone than to hear from the man who invented it?