A Newspaper Article From 1963 Predicted a Phone That You’d One Day Be Able to Put in Your Pocket

The concept of a cellphone existed long before you held one in your hand.

In 1963, a newspaper article from the Mansfield News-Journal accurately predicting people would be able to carry a phone in their pocket in the future. The article was published on April 18, 1963. It features a picture of a woman holding something that resembles a modern flip-phone.

The article reads:
“Some day, Mainfielders will carry their telephones in their pockets. Don’t expect it to be available tomorrow, though. Frederick Huntsman, telephone company commercial manager, says, “This telephone is far in the future – commercially.” Right now, it’s a laboratory development and it’s workable, allowing the carrier to make and answer calls wherever he may be.”
The modern mobile phone wouldn’t hit the commercial market until the 1980s, but the idea of a pocket phone had been percolating for decades. In 1953, for example, the president of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. predicted that someday in the future the phone will be “carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today.” In 1926, inventor Nikola Tesla predicted that in the future people across the world would be able to communicate instantly with one another with devices that fit inside a vest pocket.