It's Been 50 Years Since Motorola Made First Mobile Phone Call On DynaTAC 8000X To Flex On Rivals

Humanity made a big leap and saw the first glimpse of the future when the first ever mobile phone call was made five decades ago. On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, who was an engineer at Motorola, placed the first-ever public call.

The First Mobile Phone Call Was Made 50 Years Ago In 1973

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50 years later, mobile phones have become an inseparable part of human life. From children to old ones, everybody is glued to their screens these days. The call that changed everything for the human race took quite a fortune to make. It cost about Rs 3.2 lakhs ($3900) to make the phone call plus 50 cents a minute to talk.

Cooper was standing on the streets of New York, right next to the Hilton hotel, when he made his first notable cell call. At the time, Cooper was the head of communications at Motorola and was on the streets to demonstrate his company¡¯s invention.

Although it is hard to shock the people of New York with anything, Cooper making a call using a phone with no cord stopped people in their tracks. Wondering to whom this historical call was made? The story has a hilarious and cheeky twist.

#OnThisDay 50 years ago today, A man called Martin Cooper from Motorola made the first ever call from the first handheld mobile phone - DynaTAC 8000x. #History #innovation #OnThisDay #firsttime pic.twitter.com/DkAPd8o7R9

¡ª Neha_Ramarao (@Neha_RamaRao) April 3, 2023

Who Was The First Ever Mobile Phone Call Made To?

While dialling up the first-ever mobile phone call, Cooper did not call his mother or his relatives but decided to call Motorola¡¯s counterpart at the time, Bell Labs. The company was also working on making a phone without a cord.

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So, Cooper pulled the ultimate petty move and called up the company, "I said, I'm calling you from a cellphone, but a real cellphone¡ªthe personal, handheld, portable cellphone. You notice I was not averse to rubbing his nose in our achievement," recalled Cooper in a conversation on the NPR show ¡®All Things Considered¡¯.

At the moment, Cooper and his team knew how monumental the call was. They predicted, then, that in the future, every person would have a cell phone. Well, their prediction came to fruition within five decades of their first call.

Although the call was made in 1973, it took another 11 years for the company to come up with a prototype, which was named the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X and would be around Rs 96K ($11,700) today.

In a conversation with the BBC, Ben Wood from the Mobile Phone Museum described the first-ever cell phone, "Basically, it just dialled the number and made the call. There was no messaging, no camera. Thirty minutes of talk-time, 10 hours to charge the battery, about 12 hours of standby time, and a 6 in. (15cm) antenna on the top."