The first cellular phone was the culmination of efforts begun at
Bell Labs, which first proposed the idea of a cellular system in 1947, and continued to petition the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for channels through the 1950s and 1960s, and research conducted at
Motorola. In 1960, electrical engineer
John F. Mitchell became Motorola's chief engineer for its mobile communication products. Mitchell oversaw the development and marketing of the first
pager to use transistors. Motorola had long produced
mobile telephones for cars that were large and heavy and consumed too much power to allow their use without the automobile's engine running. Mitchell's team, which included
Martin Cooper, developed portable cellular telephony, and Mitchell was among the Motorola employees granted a
patent for this work in 1973; the first call on the prototype was completed, reportedly, to a wrong number. Motorola announced the development of the Dyna-Tac in April 1973, saying that it expected to have it fully operational within three years. Motorola said that the Dyna-Tac would weigh and would cost between $60 and $100 per month. Motorola predicted that the cost would decrease to $10 or $12 per month in no more than 20 years. Motorola said that, while the Dyna-Tac would not use the same network as the existing mobile service network, it anticipated resolving this so that all mobile devices would use the same network by around 1980. By 1975, Motorola's expectations had changed; the Dyna-Tac was anticipated to be released to the public by 1985 because of
U.S. Federal Communications Commission proceedings. While Motorola was developing the cellular phone itself, from 1968 to 1983, Bell Labs worked on the system called
AMPS, while others designed cell phones for that and other cellular systems. Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, led a team that produced the DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercially available cellular phone small enough to be easily carried, and made the first phone call from it. The DynaTAC 8000X received approval from the U.S.
FCC on September 21, 1983, shortly after which Motorola began beta-testing it in the United States. Quantity production of the DynaTAC 8000X commenced early in April 1984, at which point it was fully commercially available. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was very large compared to phones today. This first cell phone was very expensive when it was first released in the United States in 1984. The DynaTAC's retail price, $3,995 (about $ in ), ensured that it would not become a mass-market item (the minimum wage in the United States was $3.35 per hour in 1984, which meant that it required more than 1192 hours of work – more than 7 months at a standard 40-hour work week – just working for the phone, without taxes); by 1998, when Mitchell retired, cellphones and associated services made up two thirds of Motorola's $30billion in revenue. On October 13, 1983, David D. Meilahn placed the first commercial wireless call on a DynaTAC from his
1983 Mercedes-Benz 380SL to Bob Barnett, former president of
Ameritech Mobile Communications, who then placed a call on a DynaTAC from inside a Chrysler convertible to the grandson of
Alexander Graham Bell, who was in Germany for the event. The call, made at
Soldier Field in Chicago, is considered to be a major turning point in communications. Later,
Richard H. Frenkiel, the head of system development at Bell Laboratories, said about the DynaTAC: "It was a real triumph; a great breakthrough." ==Publications==