Forty years after the first UK mobile phone call, we meet the man who made it

National World - LocalTV

As we reminisce about the evolution of mobile phones, from their chunky beginnings to today's sleek, multifunctional devices, it's clear they've transformed the way we connect with one another.

Transcript

00:00So, I was snuck up to central London to Parliament Square and we had a little area cordoned off

00:08and I was going to make the very first call to my father. It was going to be a surprise

00:12to him and he was at home at a family party. So, I had this, what they used to call the

00:18VT1, the very first phone. It was basically a car battery with a clunky old handset stuck

00:24on it and a crowd had gathered around and obviously our PR people were there too to

00:31record this historic event. And people were looking at me thinking, what is that person

00:38carrying in his hand? It looks rather like a car battery with some bit of plastic stuck

00:42on top, which of course is what it was. So, I made the very first call and a few minutes

00:49after midnight, 1st January 1985, and everything worked well. All the call went through and

00:55I said, Happy New Year Dad, it's Mike here and this is the very first call ever made

01:02to the UK mobile network. At the time of that historic call, did you have any sense of sort

01:09of how revolutionary mobile technology would become in sort of transforming communication

01:14the way it has? I think at that time, honestly, nobody had any idea. I mean, in 1984, you still

01:22had to wait 10 years before the internet came along. Even the visionaries in that time, like

01:27my father, for example, he was convinced it would take off because he always felt, you know, people

01:33love to talk and human beings are naturally social animals. And if you give them the opportunity to

01:40contact more people more easily, wherever you are in the country, in the world, people will

01:48grasp that opportunity. And whether it's for work reasons or whether it's for your

01:52social reasons, you know, people would grow to love the ability to do that.

Category

Transcript

Recommended