The invention of the first
handheld mobile phone is
credited to Dr Martin
Cooper and his team at
Motorola in April 1973.
The first call he made was
to rival inventor Joel Engel
at Bell Laboratories, who
had also been racing to
invent the first mobile
phone. Before this time,
radiophones on board
ships and in cars were
available. However,
Cooper’s phone was the
first truly handheld
modern mobile phone. It
weighed in at around two
kilograms and had a
battery life of only 20
minutes. According to
Cooper, this didn’t matter
as you couldn’t really
hold the phone up for
that long!