On April 3rd 1973 inventor Martin Cooper of Motorola placed the first ever cellphone call from a New York City sidewalk. Who did he call? The president of Motorola? No, he called Joel Engel, his rival at Bell Labs; way to rub it in Martin. Cooper says that his inspiration for the device came from watching Captain Kirk from Star Trek talking on his communicator.

In case you hadn't noticed, cell phones have become somewhat smaller in the 35 years since. Martin's model weighed 2 1/2 pounds and had a talk time of 35 minutes, after which you needed to recharge it for 10 hours.

I guess jacket pockets were bigger back then.

From Wired.com