Brett Molina

USA TODAY

Since Tuesday marks National Telephone Day, let's remember an important moment in the device's history: the first cellphone call.

It happened in 1973, several years before the first cellphone was even sold. Martin Cooper made the first call on a cellular network using a Motorola DynaTac.

The DynaTac was inspired by the flip-top communicator famously used by Captain Kirk in Star Trek. It was 10 inches long and weighed 2.5 pounds. It's a phone Zack Morris would've been proud of.

80S GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

For comparison, the latest MacBook Pro weighs about 3 pounds. And don't get us started on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone 7 weighs under 5 ounces, while the iPhone 7 Plus weighs just over 6.5 ounces.

And next time you complain about battery life, remember the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X only offered a half-hour of talk time on a full charge. The iPhone 7 offers up to 14 hours.

It wasn't until 1984 when the first cellphone went on sale. It cost nearly $4,000.

In its early days, the cellphone was a novelty, often reserved for the wealthy. Today, nearly 95% of Americans own a cell phone, according to Pew Research Center. Of those, 77% of Americans own a smartphone.

Since that first call, the cellphone has undergone significant changes. They shrunk, starting with the classic Nokia phones in the '90s, capable of such high-tech wizardry as games of Snake. Then came another big name in the life of Motorola: the Razr.

Eventually, thanks to BlackBerry, the smartphone was born, paving the way for the Snapchatting, selfie-taking, video-chatting mobile world we live in today.

My first cellphone: the Nokia 6610. It's a brick by today's standards, but seemed microscopic compared to the DynaTac. Texting was not fun (remember tapping the 7 several times to get to a lowercase “s”?), and there was no way you were taking pictures with that thing. But it had Snake, which still rules.

Snake GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Remember your first cellphone? Let us know in the comments.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.