Episode 1026: Greatest American Inventions — The Mobile Phone

On a Manhattan sidewalk in 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first handheld cellular call-to his rival at Bell Labs, just to say Motorola got there first. Newt traces the mobile phone from a $3,995 status symbol to a global phenomenon with more subscriptions than people on Earth. Beyond the American story, this episode spotlights the developing world, where mobile networks leapfrogged…