50 years ago, on April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first call using a mobile phone. From his office on New York's 6th Avenue, the then-General Manager of the company's Communications Systems division dialed a rival inventor, Dr. Joel Engel, who – out of disbelief or anger – reportedly said nothing on the other end of the line.
The device in question supposedly weighed more than a kilo, measuring 22.8 x 12.7 x 4.4cm, and took ten hours to charge to full capacity. In other words, the plastic brick on which Cooper made that groundbreaking call was about as far removed from today's very best phones as you can imagine.
