When was the first cell phone invented?

When the cell phone was first invented how much did it cost?

• Answer:

  It has been told the first cell phones where for government officials and police and they cost up to $15,000 and where very expensive to operate. Dr Martin Cooper, of Motorola at the time, is often credited with inventing the first portable cell phone in April 1973. He did an interview on CPAN a few years ago and one of the questions was how much did the phone cost to design and build. He said it cost hundreds of thousands of 1973 dollars. So much in fact, that he said Motorola had to shut down some departments to save money in order to keep funding the project. He did not give exact figures because I'm sure he probably didn't know, but he likely had some idea what it was costing. That is a lot of money today, so imagine how much it was 40 years ago! He mentioned the original "brick" could only send and receive calls and only had enough power for 20 minutes of talk time, but he said that wasn't a problem because it was so heavy that nobody could hold it up for that long.