I found it somewhat fascinating that the first cell phone call was made in April of 1973 when Dr. Martin Cooper, general manager of Motorola, drove to Manhattan and called Bell Labs in New Jersey.

This completed the first cell or mobile phone call in history. There were two-way radios that could communicate with cops, cabs and more before the invention of the mobile phone, but there was never a phone you could take with you.

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The first device weighed a little over 2 pounds and had a short battery life.

The mobile phone would grow quickly in the 1980s. I had one for about a year. It was huge. It was like carrying a large car battery with a phone sitting on it. When you get an incoming call the ringer sounds like a fire alarm going off.

It was expensive. Very expensive. My monthly bill would be over $2,000. My company  pulled all of our phones because of the outrageous cost.

I got one for my car in the late 80s and used it on long-distance commutes. The bill was still high but was getting more manageable then the old portable years ago. How far we have come.

Verizon says it now handles an average of 800 million phone calls per day. This is more than twice the average of calls on Mother's Day.

Overall volume for Verizon is up 35%. Verizon attributes this increase to the pandemic and people using their phones to work from home. Before the pandemic, according to a study done by UCN, there is an average of 12.4 billion calls everyday. That's over 4.5 trillion calls each year.

It's fitting that the first mobile phone call happened here in New Jersey. I think it's safe to add the mobile phone to one of the best NJ inventions of all time, which I'm sure you use one today.

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