This week marks the 41st anniversary of the first ever (civilian) mobile phone call made in the UK.
The call was made from London's St Katharine Docks on 1 January 1985, via the Vodafone network, by comedian Ernest Wise. Little Ern's patronage may seem incongruous, but Wise had already worked on an ad for Atari with his comedy partner Eric Morecambe earlier that decade, so was already well-versed in hawking grey, clunky pieces of tech for (presumably) a neat little pay packet.
A crowd gathered in front of the Dickens Inn to witness Wise call up the Vodafone office in Newbury with a Transportable Vodafone VT1; these beasts weighed around five kilos and cost two grand — or £5,000 in today's money. (Sadly, Wise's call could not be made to Eric Morecambe, as he'd died the previous summer.)
We don't know what Wise's words actually were, but back then, Vodafone consisted of a handful of employees working above an Indian takeaway, so perhaps he put in an order for a rogan josh, mushroom rice and a peshwari naan.
Whatever was said, Wise made the call in front of a 19th century mail coach, wearing full Dickensian coachman's garb, which hardly screamed 'The future is here!' It was, however, in keeping with the galleried pub backdrop. Here's Ernie making that call (you can make out the Dickens Inn, behind him):
But there's a problem with this story. Because in fact the first mobile phone call in the UK had already been made some hours before. That phone call involved another Ernest — Ernest Harrison, the first chairman of Vodafone. The story goes that Ernest's son, Michael Harrison, snuck out of his family’s New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey and drove to London to "surprise" his father, calling him from among a group of revellers in Parliament Square. Harrison Jnr recalls that the line was crystal clear — maybe because there weren't 20 million Vodafone users clogging up the network at the time.
Here's Michael Harrison making that Parliament Square call:
And here's Daddy on the other end of the line:
Judging from these photos, it's hard not to think there wasn't so much of a surprise element to the whole stunt (what, for instance, if a waiter had answered the phone instead of Harrison?). Nonetheless, it was a landmark in technological advance, and a harbinger of the many thousands who would stand in front of Big Ben 40 years later, using their mobiles — ironically, to take photographs of the landmark itself.
Here's a picture of Michael Harrison reenacting that phone call in front of Big Ben in 2015, marking the 30th anniversary of his call:
Next week: we debunk the myth that Charlie Chaplin was the first person to play GoldenEye on the N64.
