Martin Cooper, chairman and CEO of ArrayComm, holds a Motorola DynaTAC, a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone, on April 2, 2003, in San Francisco. The device is 10 inches long and weighs 2.5 pounds.

Call me! Martin Cooper, chairman and CEO of ArrayComm, holds a Motorola DynaTAC, a 1973 prototype of the first handheld cellular telephone, on April 2, 2003, in San Francisco. The device is 10 inches long and weighs 2.5 pounds.

Did you sense it? Lawyers, could you feel the significance of this week in history?

If not, it may because you were busy using your Smartphone and so completely missed a remarkable anniversary: Mobile phones have been around for 40 years.

Granted, the devices you may have hefted four decades ago may not bear any resemblance to the iPhone you pocket today, but the birthday is still real.

Here is how newspapers described the anniversary: “This week in 1973, using a prototype Motorola DynaTac, inventor Martin Cooper made the first call on a mobile phone. Forty years later, it’s considered a brick compared with the diminutive devices we carry around.”

Brick is right.

Click through for more photos of mobile phones throughout history, including some with the utterly charming Cooper bearing his cutting-edge technology.

More news on the topic, and smile-inducing clips from movies and TV, are here. Have a great, phone-filled weekend.