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.