First Hand-Held Mobile Phone Call

Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola, made the first US analog mobile phone call on a larger prototype model in 1973. This is a reenactment in 2007

April 3, 1973:

Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.On 3 April 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first analog mobile phone call using a heavy prototype model. He called Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs. The phone was 2.5 pounds, and 9x5x1.75 inches in size. Although Cooper couldn't show off his new prototype for long because the talk time was only 30 minutes,and it took 10 hours to charge, but that was still amazing back then.
There was a long race between Motorola and Bell Labs to produce the first portable mobile phone. Cooper is the first inventor named on "Radio telephone system" filed on 17 October 1973 with the US Patent Office and later issued as US Patent 3,906,166. John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication products (and Cooper's boss) was also named on the patent. He successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.

Wow, that looks like fun to lug around.