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Happy Birthday! 25 Years of Cell Phones |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 15 October 2008 |
Hard to believe, but twenty-five years ago this week, the first commercial wireless call was made. That's right -- the cell phone is 25 years old. How things have changed. What was once a very expensive toy for yuppies is now more or less ubiquitous. I even got my Dad using one, and he's about as rabid a Luddite as you're likely to find. He has exactly one TV is the house, an old cathode-ray cabinet-style box, which he uses as a workbench in the garage.
That first call was quite the event. On Oct. 13, 1983, at Soldier Field
in Chicago, Ameritech Mobile -- now part of Verizon Wireless --
activated the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, known as the "brick phone." The
phone cost $3,995, was 13 inches long, and weighed almost two pounds.
The late broadcaster Jack Brickhouse, who worked for the Cubs, served
as master of ceremonies for the event. The president of Ameritech
Mobile made the first cell phone call to Alexander Graham Bell's
great-grandson -- in Germany at the time.
 Hey, those marketing guys knew how to pull a stunt, even back in the
early 1980s. At the end of September 2007, the world's cell phone
subscribers reached 3 billion, from 2 billion in September 2005,
according to research from Wireless Intelligence. That's 1 billion new
subscribers in two years, which is flatly bananas. The cell phone is,
along with the radio, television and personal computer, among the
greatest success stories in the history of consumer electronics.
So Happy Birthday, Mr. Cell Phone. In celebration, I think I'll call
Dad. It always scares the hell out of him when that rings. Next up:
Getting Dad on Facebook. I don't like my odds.
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