His invention may have revolutionised communication, but Martin Cooper, the ‘father of the cell phone’ is not sure he is entirely happy about how dependent we have become on cell phones.

In an interview with AFP, the American engineer admitted that he feels “devastated” when he sees people cross the street while looking at their cell phones. “They are out of their minds,” told the 94-year-old innovator to the news agency.

Will Mobile Phones Be Able To Make Us Live Longer?
Despite his disappointment at mobile phones becoming “an extension of the person,” the innovator thinks that there may be a time when mobile phones “conquer disease.”

“We are just at the very beginning. We’re just starting to understand what that could do. “In the future, we can expect the cell phone to revolutionize education it will revolutionize healthcare. “I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but I want you to know that within a generation or two, we are going to conquer disease,” he told the news agency.

The Birth Of The Mobile Phone
The first model of mobile phone—which came into existence on April 3, 1973, was extremely heavy. “This phone weighed over a kilo — about two and a half pounds — and had a battery life of roughly 25 minutes of talking,” he reminisced.

Cooper, who was working with Motorola at the time, pulled together experts on semiconductors, transistors, filters and antennae who worked around the clock for three months.

The modern phones range from uber-cheap to super-expensive. But the first model was extremely costly, priced at a whopping $5,000 per handset. The early phones were primarily catered to real-estate agents who were trying to sell properties. The phones enabled these agents to show clients, new homes and communicate with them promptly. “Now they could do both at the same time; it doubled their productivity,” Copper told the news agency.