FOX on Tech: Cell Phone Turns 40

First Mobile Phone - Martin Cooper

The mobile phone is over the hill.  The first-ever cell phone conversation happened 40 years ago today.

FOX News Radio’s Hank Weinbloom looks back:

4-2 Martin Cooper

FOX on Tech.

In the 1960’s, this seemed far into the future.

(Star Trek) “Kirk to Enterprise…”

…Using a tiny hand-held device to call someone.  But on April 3, 1973, the future arrived.

(Cooper) “The time was ready for competitive portable, personal portable communications.”

Martin Cooper, a top engineer with Motorola, made the first mobile phone call 40 years ago today on the streets of New York City.

(Cooper) “History tells us that we were successful.”

That first clunky phone weighed two-and-a-half pounds.  Today, of course, your smartphone weighs practically nothing and can do practically everything.

(Cooper) “The instruction book is now bigger and heavier than the phone itself.”

In New York, Hank Weinbloom, FOX News Radio.