It’s October 13th and on this day in 1983, Ameritech Mobile Communications launched the first private cellular phone network.

It is easy to think of communication technology as just a series of updates, each inventor or designer tweaking what was already there. Telegraph to telephone to mobile phone, etc. Those people from the past could likely never imagine the possibilities of today. However, while the first mobile communication network became available in the 1980s, the idea itself was predicted in the 1870s, as soon as Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Maybe even before that.