There are over 6.5 billion cellphones and fixed lines on earth. They carry the collective burden of every phone call and text message from one end of the world to the other, which is a far cry from what mankind had a mere century ago. The modern day man, who has lived through the golden age of communication, is blind to the evolution of the telephone from a rare luxury to what it is at present—an inseparable aspect of everyday life that has made the world a much smaller place compared to the days when the fastest means of communication was a carrier pigeon.

In 1984, Motorola released the first phone available on open market, weighing 1.75 pounds and with a price tag the equivalent of your mortgage. Compared to today’s smartphones, the original Motorola handset is the equivalent of a horse-drawn carriage in a race with a Ferrai—and the difference is only truly appreciable when you consider how far phones have come from 1753, when Charles Morrison proposed the idea that electricity could be used one day to transmit messages between two parties based on the idea of a telegraph.

In fact, Alexander Graham Bell's success in developing the telephone was a direct result of his efforts to improve the telegraph. On 1875, Alexander Graham Bell discovered he could hear interference over a bare wire while testing a revolutionary technique called the harmonic telegraph. The sound was that of a vibrating clock spring, accidentally caught by the receivers, and it marked the beginning of a powerful push by scientists such as Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla to develop a more practical means of long distance communication.

However, the telephone’s true expansion occurred once the military and navy threw their hats into the ring. Effective and speedy communication has always been an integral aspect of warfare and global security. In fact, one of the most famous legends of the ancient world concern Battle of Marathon during the first Persian invasion of Greece. Integral to the story is the means by which Greece was able to summon its allies by sending out a single runner, who managed to carry vital intelligence to the neighboring Spartans. War has always been as much a game of arms, as it has been one of information, and the United States military at the time understood this fact very well, and it was their initial investment in the idea of telephone that catapulted it into the global arena.

The telephone took a turn for the surreal when the first mobile phones were introduced. These were straight out of the works of Isaac Asimov, so unbelievable that when they were first shown in American films, most people were amused by

the idea of ‘wireless phones’. Of course, as knowledge increased and technology was miniaturized, so the price of the mobile phone fell drastically, enough that it was no longer a product for ultra-wealthy Wall Street brokers.

In many ways, the mobile phone as redefined our standing of distance and space. How far a person is no longer matters as much. The mobile phone as done for communication that which the car and airplane did for travel, although far more effectively. Most importantly, however, cell phones have provided access to powers that were in the past limited to an exclusive few. It has even integrated itself into popular culture and represents as much of a fashion statement and social identifier as the clothes you wear or your preference in jewelry. Mobile phones have gone from a tool of practical utility to a symbol of modern heterogeneity, since it can double as a music player, a laptop, a television and even a book, if a person is so inclined.

I find it hard to believe that the creators of the telephone, or even innovators who created the first mobile phone, would have imagined a day when the mobile became an fundamental aspect of our existence.

Can you imagine a world without phones?