The mobile phone has officially celebrated it’s 100th birthday. What’s that you say? Mobile phones have only been around for about 30 years or so? Well yes, that’s what you might think and popular wisdom would place those hulking breeze block like behemoths favoured by slick Wall Street crawlers of the 80s as the first examples of mobile phones.
According to the Telegraph however, the first mobile telephone was in fact invented by Nathan Stubblefield in 1908 and came complete with a bulky metal transmitter that makes a mobile phone from the 80s look like a starved iPhone. The telephone was comprised of some wire suspended between metal rods with the transmitter placed on a train carriage or boat. When the vehicle was close by, a signal was sent wirelessly to a telephone onboard using magnetic fields which could be heard near the other end of the wire through another phone. Clever stuff in it’s day, even if it seems caveman-like next to today’s tech.
Ok so this is a bit of a cheat in that it wasn’t really a mobile phone as you and I know it but hey, you know us, any excuse for a party.
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