As we reminisce about the evolution of mobile phones, from their chunky beginnings to today's sleek, multifunctional devices, it's clear they've transformed the way we connect with one another.
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00:00So, I was snuck up to central London to Parliament Square and we had a little area cordoned off
00:08and I was going to make the very first call to my father. It was going to be a surprise
00:12to him and he was at home at a family party. So, I had this, what they used to call the
00:18VT1, the very first phone. It was basically a car battery with a clunky old handset stuck
00:24on it and a crowd had gathered around and obviously our PR people were there too to
00:31record this historic event. And people were looking at me thinking, what is that person
00:38carrying in his hand? It looks rather like a car battery with some bit of plastic stuck
00:42on top, which of course is what it was. So, I made the very first call and a few minutes
00:49after midnight, 1st January 1985, and everything worked well. All the call went through and
00:55I said, Happy New Year Dad, it's Mike here and this is the very first call ever made
01:02to the UK mobile network. At the time of that historic call, did you have any sense of sort
01:09of how revolutionary mobile technology would become in sort of transforming communication
01:14the way it has? I think at that time, honestly, nobody had any idea. I mean, in 1984, you still
01:22had to wait 10 years before the internet came along. Even the visionaries in that time, like
01:27my father, for example, he was convinced it would take off because he always felt, you know, people
01:33love to talk and human beings are naturally social animals. And if you give them the opportunity to
01:40contact more people more easily, wherever you are in the country, in the world, people will
01:48grasp that opportunity. And whether it's for work reasons or whether it's for your
01:52social reasons, you know, people would grow to love the ability to do that.