Motorola DynaTAC 8000X: The $3,995 Brick Phone and Its Wrong-Number Debut

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, short for Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage, stood 10 inches tall before its rubber duck antenna, weighed about two and a half pounds, took 10 hours to charge and lasted 30 minutes of talk. It depended on a cellular concept Bell Labs proposed in 1947: the AMPS network of hexagonal cells, where low-power towers reuse frequencies and hand calls from cell to cell. At Motorola, engineer James Mikulski pitched a portable phone, and chief engineer John F. Mitchell rejected it until his own frustration with a 400 megahertz car phone changed his mind. Martin Cooper led the team that built the prototype, and on April 3, 1973, Motorola made the first publicized handheld cellular call, tying a phone number to a person instead of a place.

The FCC did not approve the DynaTAC 8000X until September 21, 1980, after years of spectrum rulemaking and network construction. The first commercial wireless call came on October 13, 1983, when David D. Meilahn called former Ameritech Mobile president Bob Barnett, sitting in a car at Soldier Field in Chicago, who then called Alexander Graham Bell's grandson in Germany. Production began in April 1984 at $3,995, more than 1,192 hours of work at the $3.35 minimum wage, and the phone became a status symbol for traders and real estate moguls. The MicroTAC flip design replaced the brick in 1989, the line ended in 1994, and by Mitchell's 1998 retirement phones and services made up two thirds of Motorola's $30 billion in revenue.

• Reportedly, the first call completed on the 1973 prototype reached a wrong number.
• Besides the 12-key pad, the phone had RCL, CLR, STO and FCN keys and memory for exactly 30 numbers.
• U.S. models lit their LED digits in red and international models in green; the vehicle-oriented 6000XL used a vacuum fluorescent display.
• Motorola's one-hour fast charger overheated the nickel cadmium batteries, shortening their life and sometimes killing them outright.
• Accessories included a brass swivel antenna and a zippered leather case with a clear front and a spring steel belt clip.