We get the cul­ture our tech­nol­o­gy per­mits, and in the 21st cen­tu­ry no tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment has changed cul­ture like that of the smart­phone. As with every piece of per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy that we strug­gle to remem­ber how we lived with­out, it evolved into being from a series of sim­pler pre­de­ces­sors that, no mat­ter how clunky they seem now, were received as tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels in their day. Take it from Mar­tin Coop­er, the Motoro­la Engi­neer who invent­ed the first hand­held cel­lu­lar mobile phone. “We did­n’t know it was going to be his­toric in any way at all,” he says of the first pub­licly demon­strat­ed cell­phone call in 1973 in the Bloomberg video above. “We were only wor­ried about one thing: is the phone going to work when we turn it on?”

The device Coop­er had in hand was the pro­to­type that would even­tu­al­ly become the Motoro­la DynaT­AC 8000X, the first com­mer­cial portable cel­lu­lar phone. (This as dis­tinct from the exist­ing car-phone sys­tems that Coop­er cred­its with inspir­ing him to devel­op an entire­ly hand­held ver­sion.) Brought to mar­ket in 1983, it weighed about two pounds, took ten hours to charge a bat­tery that last­ed only 30 min­utes, could store no more than 30 phone num­bers, and cost near­ly $10,000 in today’s dol­lars.

Yet “con­sumers were so impressed by the con­cept of being always acces­si­ble with a portable phone that wait­ing lists for the DynaT­AC 8000X were in the thou­sands,” says Motoro­la design mas­ter Rudy Krolopp as quot­ed by the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute. “In 1983, the notion of sim­ply mak­ing wire­less phone calls was rev­o­lu­tion­ary.”

38 years after “the brick,” as the 8000X was known, we’ve grown so used to that notion that many of us hard­ly ever make wire­less phone calls any­more, pre­fer­ring to com­mu­ni­cate on our phones through text mes­sages or an ever-expand­ing uni­verse of inter­net-based apps — to say noth­ing of the oth­er aspects of our lives increas­ing­ly han­dled through palm-sized touch­screens. “The mod­ern smart­phone is a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel,” says Coop­er. “It real­ly is incred­i­ble, all the stuff that is squeezed into that cell­phone.” Yet despite the aston­ish­ing evo­lu­tion of his inven­tion it rep­re­sents, he’s not sat­is­fied. “We think that we can make a smart­phone that does all things for all peo­ple, and yet we know that it does­n’t do any of those things per­fect­ly. We’ve still got a ways to go.” If you’re read­ing this on a smart­phone, know that you hold in your hand the “brick” of 2059.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

When We All Have Pock­et Tele­phones (1923)

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Sci­en­tist Cre­ates a Work­ing Rotary Cell­phone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Not long after Niko­la Tes­la died in 1943, the world seemed to for­get him. The first pub­lic trib­ute paid to his con­sid­er­able research and devel­op­ment in the realm of elec­tric­i­ty there­after came in 1960 with the intro­duc­tion of the tes­la, the SI unit of mag­net­ic flux den­si­ty. But in the decades since Tes­la has enjoyed an after­life as an icon of under-appre­ci­at­ed pre­science. Some of this rep­u­ta­tion is based on inter­views giv­en in the 1920s and 1930s, when he was still a celebri­ty. Take the short Col­liers mag­a­zine pro­file from 1926 in which he fore­sees the emer­gence of devices that will allow us “to com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er instant­ly, irre­spec­tive of dis­tance”; a man, Tes­la pre­dicts, “will be able to car­ry one in his vest pock­et.”

This arti­cle is one source of the words spo­ken in the Voic­es of the Past video above. In it, Tes­la also speaks of a future huge­ly enriched by the “wire­less ener­gy” he spent much of his career pur­su­ing. It will pow­er “fly­ing machines” in which “we shall ride from New York to Europe in a few hours.” A house­hold’s dai­ly news­pa­per “will be print­ed ‘wire­less­ly’ in the home dur­ing the night.”

Thanks to instant world­wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion, “inter­na­tion­al bound­aries will be large­ly oblit­er­at­ed and a great step will be made toward the uni­fi­ca­tion and har­mo­nious exis­tence of the var­i­ous races inhab­it­ing the globe.” All the while, new gen­er­a­tions of ever bet­ter-edu­cat­ed women “will ignore prece­dent and star­tle civ­i­liza­tion with their progress.”

Many will applaud Tes­la’s views on the advance­ment of women, though here his think­ing takes a turn that may give pause even to the most for­ward-think­ing among us today: “The acqui­si­tion of new fields of endeav­or by women, their grad­ual usurpa­tion of lead­er­ship, will dull and final­ly dis­si­pate fem­i­nine sen­si­bil­i­ties, will choke the mater­nal instinct, so that mar­riage and moth­er­hood may become abhor­rent and human civ­i­liza­tion draw clos­er and clos­er to the per­fect civ­i­liza­tion of the bee.” The inven­tor of alter­nat­ing cur­rent has much to say in favor of api­an soci­ety, “the most high­ly orga­nized and intel­li­gent­ly coor­di­nat­ed sys­tem of any form of non­ra­tional ani­mal life.” And so why not restruc­ture human civ­i­liza­tion around a sin­gle queen?

This video also draws on a 1937 inter­view with Tes­la in Lib­er­ty mag­a­zine, which fea­tures even more dis­com­fit­ing propo­si­tions. “The only method com­pat­i­ble with our notions of civ­i­liza­tion and the race is to pre­vent the breed­ing of the unfit by ster­il­iza­tion and the delib­er­ate guid­ance of the mat­ing instinct,” Tes­la insists. “The Sec­re­tary of Hygiene or Phys­i­cal Cul­ture will be far more impor­tant in the cab­i­net of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Sec­re­tary of War.” Despite per­haps hav­ing crossed the line into mad-sci­en­tism, Tes­la remained inci­sive about the per­sis­tent con­di­tion of humans under high tech­nol­o­gy. “We suf­fer from the derange­ment of our civ­i­liza­tion because we have not yet com­plete­ly adjust­ed our­selves to the machine age,” he claims. “The solu­tion of our prob­lems does not lie in destroy­ing but in mas­ter­ing the machine.” Here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, of course, many of us would be con­tent sim­ply to gain mas­tery over the one in our vest pock­et.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la: As Told by Tech­noil­lu­sion­ist Mar­co Tem­pest

Futur­ist from 1901 Describes the World of 2001: Opera by Tele­phone, Free Col­lege & Pneu­mat­ic Tubes Aplen­ty

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.