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In
1983 the Motorola
DynaTAC 8000X
received approval
from the U.S.
Federal
Communications
Commission and
become the world's
first commercial
handheld cellular
phone. When it was
made available for
purchase just a
few months later
on March 6 1983 it
ignited a demand
for personal
wireless
communication.
Everyone wanted to
be the first to
get their hands on
these awesomely
unwieldy portable
analogue
brain-fryers.
Motorola's
DynaTAC 'Dynamic
Adaptive Total
Area Coverage' let
you talk for 30
minutes, could
go a full eight
hours between
charges, was 13 x
1.75 x 3.5 inches
in dimension,
boasted eight
hours of standby
time, took 10
hours to recharge,
featured an
LED display and
memory to store
thirty
"dialing
locations".
Wooo.
Oh
yes, the price was
some $3,995 in
1983 dollars.
The
company had
invested fifteen
years of research
and $100 million
in the advancement
of cellular
technology. They
started building
prototypes in the
early seventies
which eventually
morphed into this
awesome telecom
monolith
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Dr
Martin
Cooper
(above), a
former
general
manager
for the
systems
division
at
Motorola,
is
considered
the
inventor
of the
first
portable
handset
and the
first
person to
make a
call on a
portable
cell phone
in April
1973. The
first call
he made
was to his
rival,
Joel
Engel,
Bell Labs
head of
research.
Cheeky.
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Consumers
were so impressed
by the concept of
being always
accessible with a
portable phone
that waiting lists
for the DynaTAC
8000X were in the
thousands, despite
the initial $
3,995 retail price.
Rudy
Krolopp (Above),
one of the
original Motorola
design team
members
responsible for
creating the
DynaTAC 8000X
phone recalled
“In 1983, the
notion of simply
making wireless
phone calls was
revolutionary and
it was an exciting
time to be
pioneering the
technology at
Motorola. Marty
(Cooper) called me
to his office one
day in December
1972 and said,
'We've got to
build a portable
cell phone' and I
said 'What the
hell's a portable
cell phone?'"
20 years
since Motorola
launched the
DynaTAC 8000X
phone or 'brick
phone' the
number of global
wireless
subscribers has
grown from
approximately
300,000 in 1984 to
more than 1.2
billion today.
We
have a number of
these phones
available in the
most inspiring
colour
combinations:
Purchase
the secondhand 8000x in dark
grey for £59
Apologies
but this colour is
out of stock.
Purchase
the secondhand 8000x in tan
& grey for
£59
Apologies
but this colour is
out of stock.
Purchase
the secondhand 8000X in tan
& white for
£59
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