Wait, progress never comes all of a sudden. The first flip phone was built in 1963 and AI was announced 100 years ago.
60 years ago, on April 18, 1963, the manager of a telephone company made this prediction in the “Mansfield Ohio News Journal”: “Some day, Mansfielders will carry theirs telephones in their pockets”. The assistant presented a kind of flip phone. The future would also bring appliances with kitchen loudspeakers, he said, so that the housewife could talk on the phone while cooking, as well as a “TV telephone” with image transmission.
Designed to make women happy in 1963: Kitchen speakers
Ten years later, the time had really come: Martin Cooper, who is now considered the inventor of the cell phone, made a call on April 3, 1973 in the middle of 6th Avenue in Manhattan with a cordless phone, and quite a few passers-by thought he was crazy at the time.
It took another ten years before everyone was able to make mobile phone calls. In 1983, Motorola launched the first cell phone for everyone: weighing 800 grams and 33 centimeters long. Despite the price of 4000 dollars, 300,000 units were sold in the first year.
AI predicted 100 years ago
But what really impresses us as a digital agency is that a certain Mr. Nikola Tesla dreamed of cordless telecommunications as early as 1926 and announced the “telephone for your pocket”. With the help of wireless technology, the world of the future will be transformed into a single comprehensive super-brain, said the physicist. Almost 100 years ago, this was nothing less than the announcement of AI, which seems to have taken us by surprise today.
In Germany in 1963, while people in Mansfield were dreaming of pocket cell phones, less then 20 percent of households had a landline telefon. Therefore, most people use a telephone booth.
