![Cell Phones Facilitate Instant and Mobile Communication](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/images/timeline-image/2017/06/globalization_communications_timeline_1973_405x405.jpg?itok=un-gEfk-)
Martin Cooper, inventor of the handheld cellular mobile phone, holds a 1973 Motorola DynaTAC prototype in Taipei on June 5, 2007.
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Rico Shen via Wikimedia Commons under GFDL and CC BY-SA 3.0
2001
A century after the telephone’s invention, Motorola placed the world’s first call from a cell phone (to its rival AT&T, of course). Motorola’s cell phone looked nothing like the ones available today: it was big, weighed almost three pounds, and could be used only for about thirty-five minutes. As a research prototype, it also wasn’t publicly available. Motorola’s first cell phone for sale, based on this prototype, could cost up to $4,000, meaning cell phones were even more of a luxury item then than they are today, when 96 percent of Americans own cell phones.