Sun April 8, 2012 A Brief History Of The Mobile Phone RACHEL
MARTIN, HOST: A new Smartphone goes on sale. The Nokia Lumina
900 represents the Finnish company's big and somewhat desperate
effort to regain a toehold in the all-important U.S. market.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman offers this brief history of America's
infatuation with the mobile phone. WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: In The
iconic 1987 film "Wall Street," Michael Douglas strolls the
beach with and uses his cell phone to congratulate an associate
on making a ton of money. (SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "WALL STREET")
MICHAEL DOUGLAS: (as Gordon Gekko) You done good, but you got to
keep doing good. I showed you how the game works, now school's
out. KAUFMAN: That image gave the still novel gizmo a huge boost
in popular culture. That same year, the mobile phone got another
jolt into the public's consciousness with cameras rolling in
Helsinki, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called Moscow. MIKHAIL
GORBACHEV: (Foreign language spoken) KAUFMAN: But while the late
1980s marked the