The cell phone began with a boast—Motorola’s Martin Cooper walking down Sixth Avenue on April 3, 1973, as Manhattan pedestrians gawked, calling his rival Joel Engel at AT&T: “Joel, I’m calling you from a cellular phone. A real cellular phone: a handheld, portable, real cellular phone.” (“I don’t remember exactly what he said,” Cooper recalls, “but it was really quiet for a while. My assumption was that he was grinding his teeth.”)
