<Tr> <Td_colspan="3">--Erich Kästner </Td> </Tr> <P> The Second World War made military use of radio telephony links . Hand - held radio transceivers have been available since the 1940s . Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940s . Early devices were bulky, consumed high power, and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations . Modern cellular networks allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice and data communications . </P> <P> In the United States, engineers from Bell Labs began work on a system to allow mobile users to place and receive telephone calls from automobiles, leading to the inauguration of mobile service on 17 June 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri . Shortly after, AT&T offered Mobile Telephone Service . A wide range of mostly incompatible mobile telephone services offered limited coverage area and only a few available channels in urban areas . The introduction of cellular technology, which allowed re-use of frequencies many times in small adjacent areas covered by relatively low powered transmitters, made widespread adoption of mobile telephones economically feasible . </P> <P> One of the earliest fictional descriptions of a mobile phone was the 1948 science fiction novel Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein . The protagonist, who has just traveled to Colorado from his home in Des Moines, receives a call from his father on a pocket telephone . Before going to space he decides to ship the telephone home "since it was limited by its short range to the neighborhood of an earth - side (i.e. terrestrial) relay office ." Ten years later, an essay by Arthur C. Clarke envisioned a "personal transceiver, so small and compact that every man carries one ." He wrote: "the time will come when we will be able to call a person anywhere on Earth merely by dialing a number ." Such a device would also, in Clarke's vision, include means for global positioning so that "no one need ever again be lost ." Later, in Profiles of the Future, he predicted the advent of such a device taking place in the mid-1980s . U.S. TV series Get Smart (1965 - 1970) depicted spy gadgets with mobile telephones concealed in random objects, including shoes . </P>

When was the first mobile phone released to the public