Mobile phone is 25

THE MOBILE PHONE was launched 25 years ago.

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X cost $3,995, was 13 inches long, weighed 1.75 pounds and required the strength of two yuppies to operate. However it was a start of a terrible quest that would ultimately end in the Iphone and therefore collapse of common sense as we know it.

The first commercial call was made in October 1983, at Soldier Field, where Ameritech Mobile, now part of Verizon Wireless, made the call from an 8000X " brick" phone.

Bob Barnett, president of Ameritech Mobile, made the first cell phone call to Alexander Graham Bell's great-grandson, who happened to be in Germany at the time.

In those days the service cost $50 a month plus 40 cents a minute peak, 24 cents off-peak. You could only call from Chicago.

In the first year Ameritech Mobile signed up 12,000 subscribers. µ