The first mobile phone I bought was a Qualcomm QCP-1900 in 1997, when the devices were the size of a case for your eyeglasses and were just beginning to achieve mass appeal. That was six years ago and mobile phones seemed new to me then, but one thing I’ve since learned is that technology is always older than one might suspect. In fact, the very first mobile telephone call was placed thirty years ago today, which makes the cell phone roughly as old as the Walkman, as hard as that is to believe.That first call was placed by the widely acknowledged inventor of mobile phones, Dr. Martin Cooper. Cooper, then working for Motorola, made his first call to his counterpart and rival, as recounted in this segment from NPR’s Morning Edition.
Because these phones disappear into our past without much fanfare, I am posting here, for posterity, images of the three mobile phones I have owned.
From left: the Qualcomm QCP-1900, the Samsung SCH-3500 and the LG TP5200. These images aren’t exactly to scale.