In April 1973, Marty Cooper stood on a corner of Sixth Avenue in New York USA and took a phone book from his pocket.
He then punched a number into a large, cream-coloured device and put it to his ear while passers-by stared at him.
Mr Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, rang his counterpart at rival firm Bell Laboratories, to triumphantly tell him he was calling from “a personal, handheld, portable cell phone”.
He recalls there being silence on the end of the line.
“I think he was gritting his teeth,” says the 94-year-old, laughing.
Bell Laboratories had been focusing on developing a car-based phone instead, he says. “Could you believe that? So we had been trapped in our homes and offices by this copper wire for over 100 years – and now they were going to trap us in our cars!”
A commercial version of the Motorola phone, first used by Mr Cooper, is owned by the Mobile Phone Museum.
Needless to say, Mr Cooper and Motorola did not agree this was the way forward – and history has proved them right.
Shared on avantmalawi.com