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On National Telephone Day, we remember those brick-like cellphones

Brett Molina
USA TODAY

Since Tuesday marks National Telephone Day, let's remember an important moment in the device's history: the first cellphone call.

Martin Cooper holds a Motorola DynaTAC, a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone on Market Street in San Francisco in 2003.

It happened in 1973, several years before the first cellphone was even sold. Martin Cooper made the first call on a cellular network using a Motorola DynaTac.

The DynaTac was inspired by the flip-top communicator famously used by Captain Kirk in Star Trek. It was 10 inches long and weighed 2.5 pounds. It's a phone Zack Morris would've been proud of.

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For comparison, the latest MacBook Pro weighs about 3 pounds. And don't get us started on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone 7 weighs under 5 ounces, while the iPhone 7 Plus weighs just over 6.5 ounces.

And next time you complain about battery life, remember the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X only offered a half-hour of talk time on a full charge. The iPhone 7 offers up to 14 hours.

It wasn't until 1984 when the first cellphone went on sale. It cost nearly $4,000.

In its early days, the cellphone was a novelty, often reserved for the wealthy. Today, nearly 95% of Americans own a cell phone, according to Pew Research Center. Of those, 77% of Americans own a smartphone.

Since that first call, the cellphone has undergone significant changes. They shrunk, starting with the classic Nokia phones in the '90s, capable of such high-tech wizardry as games of Snake. Then came another big name in the life of Motorola: the Razr.

Eventually, thanks to BlackBerry, the smartphone was born, paving the way for the Snapchatting, selfie-taking, video-chatting mobile world we live in today.

My first cellphone: the Nokia 6610. It's a brick by today's standards, but seemed microscopic compared to the DynaTac. Texting was not fun (remember tapping the 7 several times to get to a lowercase “s”?), and there was no way you were taking pictures with that thing. But it had Snake, which still rules.

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Remember your first cellphone? Let us know in the comments.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

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