First cell phone in TV/film?

Kirk in the 1920's ? (City on the edge of forever) or Man From Uncle pen phone, around the same time as get smart.
 
You should define your parameters...

Real phone shown? Or fictional device...?

Distinguished between car phones?


One that sticks out for me is the suit case Danny Glover uses in Lethal Weapon, 1987.
 
Closest thing to a cellphone like device. Just wondering who dreamed up the cell phone before it was invented.

Smart predates Kirk - besides wasn't the tricorder more of a two way radio?

The pen cominicator, originally a cigarette case was an fm transmiter and unable to make phone calls. I looked it up. That cigarette case is smokin hot.

The time traveler thing is cool. He looks like Dr. Caligari.
 
If you want to include car phones, which used radio technology instead of cellular, then you'll be going back decades. Batman TV series comes to mind, but I'm sure there are much older.
 
Looked into this too. Aparrently car phones have been around since the 1940's. Bogart had on in the movie Sabrina even Parry Mason had one in his car.

It's like a history lesson in here.
 
I remember Michael Douglas using a brick of a cordless phone in Wall Street.

Remember, though, that "cell phones" were actually bag phones or car phones for a very long time. Literally full-sized phones physically attached into cars or small satchels carried around. I'd look for one of those.
 
I think his was just a cordless house phone. Although in 1987, it looked like the height of technology that only the super-rich would have. When you go back and watch it now, it's only slightly less dated than Darryl Hannah's shoulder pads.
 
If you want to be strict... "cell" phone means a "cellular" system of base stations to support the handset as it travels from one area to another and gets handed off from one base station to another.

When did true cellular systems first exist?

Though ham radio guys probably used mountain top repeater sites or on top of tall buildings prior to that and could make phone calls as long as the were in range of the repeater. So I'm sure there was a product like that prior to cellular proper.
 
Though ham radio guys probably used mountain top repeater sites or on top of tall buildings prior to that and could make phone calls as long as the were in range of the repeater. So I'm sure there was a product like that prior to cellular proper.

I thought of that too, started looking into battlefield communication, but then you get into what is a radio and what is a cell phone.

For this I will set a couple guide lines.

1. It has to be portable enough to take it with you and carry on your person.

2. It has to be able call other phones, or resonable facsimile for that time period- portable wireless telegraph or a future phone/Bradbury.

3.it can't be called a radio. :)
 
Apparently the first one was used in 1928 .......Charlie Chaplin's time traveler - YouTube

More likely an early hearing aid. The first ones had large speakers that you had to hold up to your ear.

Last year a site posted a image from a 30s Flash Gordon strip, where Ming's soldiers were using a small flat box that opened like a laptop. There was discussion on whether or not it was a laptop. The concept of laptops didn't exist in the 1930s, but they did have portable field radios. They were large devices, usually housed in wood cases that were carried on expeditions for radio communications. The one in the Flash Gordon strip was just an advanced field radio.

In the 1936 movie "Things to Come", the people living in the future had wrist phones.

David.
 
In the 1936 movie "Things to Come", the people living in the future had wrist phones.

David.

That looks like it might do it. I should of figured H.G. Wells would of dreamed it up. It even pre dates Dick Tracy. I'm definatly going to have ro watch it.
 
An episode of "The Doris Day Show" had her boyfriend, played by Peter Crawford, call her from outside her front door on a phone in his briefcase...

*blush*

EDIT: LAWford, Peter Lawford!
 
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