(Originally published April 3, 2015)
On April 3, 1973, the first handheld mobile phone call was made.
Here are some things you might not know about early cellular phones:
First, Martin Cooper of Motorola made that first call to his counterpart at AT&T and said, “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone; a real handheld cell phone.”
Second: The prototype phone used to make that call looked virtually identical to the classic “Brick Phone” of the 1980s.
Third: The first commercially available cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X cost $3,995, which would be about $9,500 today.
Our question: Starting with a full battery, how long could you talk on a DynaTAC 8000X in 1984?
Was it:
A: 15 minutes
B: 30 minutes
C: 45 minutes
D: 60 minutes.