Today is a major milestone in the history of mobile phones as it marks the 50th anniversary since the first phone call was made on a portable cellular phone.
On Tuesday April 3, 1973, Martin (Marty) Cooper stood on Sixth Avenue in New York and called his rival Dr. Joel S. Engel who worked at AT&T’s Bell Labs to share the news that Motorola had beaten AT&T in the race to create a “personal, portable handheld cell phone”.
The call was made from a prototype DynaTAC phone, a version of which went on sale in 1984 as the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.
The Mobile Phone Museum team recently met with Marty Cooper at MWC Barcelona earlier this year where he was awarded GLOMO Lifetime Achievement Award by the GSMA. This award recognised Marty’s innovative and pioneering leadership in the technology industry. We were also featured on the BBC sharing our thoughts on this milestone with a few key phones from the collection.
Mobile Phone Museum Founder, Ben Wood with Marty Cooper at MWC Barcelona 2023
Our collection includes a DynaTAC 8000X and we took the opportunity to have a chat with Marty and get him to sign our phone at the event to make it a truly unique asset in our collection.