Flip-Top Flip-Flop
Star Trek gets credited with inspiring all sorts of things, but one such claim gets constant repetition in our mobile phone age: that the original series flip-top communicators inspired the cell phone, or at least specifically the “flip phone”.
But recently (Spring 2021) an April 1963 news clipping started making the rounds on social media that featured a “pocket” telephone.
She’s about 20 months too early to call the Enterprise to ask “Can you give us any more?” on that device.[1]
First things first. Is it authentic?
Yes. We independently tracked down the newspaper that printed it and can confirm it’s the real deal.[2] Snopes also previously weighed in on the issue and confirmed the article’s authenticity.[3]
What immediately struck us about this contraption (we suspect it may have been a mockup, not an actual working device, despite the claim) is that it’s:
hinged to flip open
slightly trapezoidal
about the same size as…
…and looks a lot like this...
![Brought to you by Mansfield Telephone…of the Future![4]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d8938941257b15f27f817c2/1626762396523-SGFPSFYMY59FG7GC4ZL8/thecagehd0148.jpg)
Brought to you by Mansfield Telephone…of the Future![4]
Look a little…familiar?
Note that the news item is dated April 18, 1963, almost eleven months before Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to Oscar Katz at Desilu, and some nineteen months before the first pilot of that show was filmed and the first communicator props were used.
Now, there’s very little extant documentation about the design of Star Trek’s props—especially for the first pilot (albeit there is a memo which indicates the “small communicator” was provided by Project Unlimited)—so it’s impossible to know for certain, but this is a case where the similarities are just too striking to simply dismiss outright. Almost any piece of design is not just about what it is but when it is made. A “pocket” telephone was not a commonplace idea in 1964, so it would be unsurprising if someone working on Trek at Desilu or Projects Unlimited didn’t remember seeing an item on this device somewhere, or a researcher turned it up when asked to provide reference material (the Gene Roddenberry files at UCLA included numerous press clippings that were provided as reference material, although this newspaper article is not among the surviving material).
If so, it seems the popular story may be backwards: Star Trek’s communicators didn’t inspire the cell/mobile phone, but, rather, this “pocket” phone perhaps inspired the first pilot communicators, and by extension, the series version that followed.
Calling Dick Tracy
But, wait, we hear some of you cry, didn’t the fellow credited with leading the development of the first handheld mobile phone—Motorola’s Martin Cooper—flat out say that he was inspired by Trek’s communicators?
Well...not exactly…
We can blame Captain Kirk…okay, William Shatner, for popularizing this notion in his 2005 program How William Shatner Changed the World.[5]
And here’s what was said in that program:
SHATNER: One day, during a break from his heavy schedule of pondering, Marty happened on an episode of Star Trek, and a piece of 23rd century technology that would change his life and take the whole world with him.MARTIN COOPER: And suddenly, there's Captain Kirk talking on his communicator. Talking. With no dialing. That was not a fantasy to us, though to the rest of the world it was. But to me, that was an objective.[6]
It’s vital to note that Cooper does not say Star Trek was his inspiration, merely that he saw Kirk on TV doing something that “was not a fantasy to us." It’s the juxtaposition of Shatner’s narration with Cooper’s statement that creates this impression.
And, in fact, Cooper later went on record to refute that myth.
MARTIN COOPER: They came over to my house, and I got so wrapped up in the glamour of making a movie that I let them get away with starting that rumor. But the reality is that I was working for Motorola for many years, for 29 years, and there we had always the dream that real communications, personal communications, had to be with a handheld device. So, if I really got that idea from somebody else, maybe it was from Dick Tracy, who many many years before that, had a wrist radio [...] a wrist two-way radio.[7]
![Dick Tracy’s famous wrist radio from a Sunday strip published on 2 Feb, 1947. It was introduced 1 Jan. 1946.[8]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d8938941257b15f27f817c2/1626767049382-7UO06ROG5A5MMEW8SS54/Dick+Tracy+copy.jpg)
Dick Tracy’s famous wrist radio from a Sunday strip published on 2 Feb, 1947. It was introduced 1 Jan. 1946.[8]
So, that’s a heaping pile of “NO” on Trek being his inspiration for the cell phone.
Future Fones
But the idea of a portable, wireless telephone wasn’t new even in 1963... even outside of Dick Tracy (which introduced his wrist radio in 1946). An item from 1952 speaks “facetiously” of the idea of a pocket phone, but then suggests such a thing with video features.[9]
A 1953 wire service item covered predictions of wrist telephones and even video phones.[10][11]
“In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk."Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?”
In the late 50s, there were claims that a “Russian engineer” had developed a “Dick Tracy” pocket radio phone. And a 1960 UPI item quotes a member of Sylvania Electric Products Inc. as predicting…
A wireless telephone mechanism which will automatically translate conversations, so that people from different continents will understand each other, was forcast [sic] yesterday. [...] Wireless telephone calls by pedestrians through two-way pocket radios the size of a pack of cigarettes. [...] Transmission of still photographs through the telephone systems at moderate cost.[12]
Vintage articles on Future Fones (Click/Tap to see larger)
[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
So, not only did these pieces predict mobile phones, but FaceTime/Zoom calls, and the Universal Translator…or at least Google Translate. A pager service was even set to start in 1962. So it’s safe to say Star Trek didn’t inspire any of these ideas, as they were already in the ether before the show was even conceived.
A look back to the future of 1962.
Flip-It Good
But, circling back to the communicator itself, did Kirk’s flip-top inspire the flip-phone form factor? (And honestly, those ubiquitous flip-phones looked more like a ST:TNG tricorder than Kirk’s mobile.)
Well, that seems logical…except that a pocket device with easy-to press-buttons is asking for butt dialing, and thus seems like an ideal candidate for some sort of cover, so why not just hinge the device like a wallet or a cigarette case or a compact to hide the buttons until you unfold it? In fact, that’s just what we see in that 1963 pocket telephone image.
The reality is that design—and industrial design—does not occur in a vacuum. People borrow from what they know or what is trendy. Take that pebbled “leatherette” or "tolex" texture on the series communicators and tricorders, which can be found all over consumer items of the era, as on cameras and amplifiers, etc.
Even Spock’s venerable flip-hood tricorder bears more than a passing resemblance to a 1959 flip-hood Philco Safari battery powered transistor TV. Perhaps not direct inspiration, but definitely the look of the time.
But can Spock watch the Niners game on his tricorder?[15][16]
And there’s an even more obvious and direct bit of “inspiration” in that 1st pilot itself. Compare the faceplate of the AT&T Picturephone Mod 1, which debuted in April 1964,[17][18] to those little gooseneck-mounted “television communicators” (as described in production memos) seen all over the Enterprise in the first pilot.
At over $100 per 10 minutes in inflation-adjusted US Dollars, let’s hope Picturephone rates dropped by the time Spock used it to call Captain Pike. [19] [20] [21] [22]
None of which is an absolute clincher that some later mobile phone designer couldn’t possibly have been inspired by Kirk’s communicator, but if they were, and if that first pilot flip-top communicator was in fact inspired by a 1963 flip-top “pocket” telephone concept, then that’s a pretty neat little loop.
A game of Telephone, if you will.
—30—
Special Thanks
To David Tilotta, Mark Farinas, and Ryan Thomas Riddle for their input on this piece.
End Notes & Sources
[1] You'll Be Able To Carry Phone In Pocket In Future, 18 April 1963, Thursday, News-Journal Mansfield, Ohio, p20 (link)
For clarity, here’s the full text from the article:
You'll Be Able To Carry Phone In Pocket In Future
Some day, Mansfielders will carry their telephones in their pockets.
Don't expect It to be available tomorrow, though.
Frederick Huntsman, telephone company commercial manager, says, "This telephone is far in the future — commercially."
★
Right now, it's a laboratory development and it's workable, allowing the carrier to make and answer calls wherever he may be.
Other telephones of the future includes a kitchen loud speaking telephone, and a visual linkage telephone. The kitchen instrument can be used as a regular telephone, a loudspeaking phone if the housewife happens to be busy preparing a meal, or as an intercom station for the home. The visual image telephone allows the parties to converse by way of a microphone and loud speaker while a miniature television camera transmits the image.
The "TV phone" also will have a writer signature transmission system and a conversation tape recorder. The new phones are being displayed at the Home and Flower Show at the Coliseum.
PHOTO CAPTION: HOW ABOUT THIS? — Mrs. Jean Conrad, commercial representative of Mansfield Telephone Co. holds up the pocket - sized, wireless telephone which Mansfielders will some day carry with them. The phone is still in the development stage and "far in the future."
[2] News-Journal Mansfield, Ohio, 18 April 1963, Thursday, p20 (link).
[3] Did 1963 Newspaper Anticipate Phones That Fit in a Pocket? The concept of a cellphone existed long before you held one in your hand, Dan Evon, Snopes, 18 May 2021 (link).
[4] Images from Star Trek’s “The Cage” via TrekCore (link).
[5] That program Itself based on his book I’m Working On That, which mentions Cooper not at all, cites no sources, yet opines, “Millions of us stay in touch using small, wireless gadgets that we call cell phones that bear a suspicious resemblance to Star Trek communicators”, p.3–4, and “So I found my way to an empty departure area and pulled out my little cell phone, an obvious Star Trek communicator rip-off” p.96. I'm Working on That: A Trek From Science Fiction to Science Fact (Star Trek), by William Shatner and Chip Walter, 2002. ISBN 9780671047375.
[6] VIDEO CLIP: Marty Cooper interview for William Shatner , Feb 12, 2015 (link).
[7] VIDEO: Marty Cooper interview for Scene World Magazine, Feb 12, 2015 (link).
[8] ComicArtFans, Dick Tracy Sunday (feat. 2-way Wrist Radio!) — Chester Gould (1947) (link).
[9] “Scientist Foresees Midget Pocket Phones With Both Speakers Able to See Each Other”, The Washington Post, 7 July 1952, p37
[10] Source: 1953 AP wire service piece printed (sometimes with edits) in multiple papers under different titles, including: “There’ll Be No Escape in Future From Telephones” Spokane Chronicle, Spokane, Washington 10 Apr 1953, Fri. p15 (link); ”Pocket Phones For Future Seen” The Christian Science Monitor Page, 10 April 1953, p18.
This and related news items are also covered by “Is This Cellphone Prediction from 1953 Real? The rotary telephone was still being used in 1953, Dan Evon, Snopes, 6 Nov. 2019 (link).
[11] ‘Dick Tracy’ Phone Claimed by Russians, L.A. Times, 23, Mar. 1959, p16.
[12] Vest Pocket Telephones Not Too Far In Future, New Journal And Guide, 9 Jan. 1960, p8.
[13] “Chinese To English—Quite Simple Someday With Telephone Device”, 9 Sept. 1960, The Arizona Republic, p33.
[14] “Phones Rings In Pocket”, The Globe and Mail, 16 Nov. 1961, p36. Seen the following year at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair Bell Telephone Systems debuted “Bellboy”, the first commercial paging electronic system.
[15] Image: Philco Safari H2010, MZTV Museum of Television (link)
[16] Image: 1959 Philco Safari H-2010 Posted on June 17, 2014 by Hepcats Haven (link).
[17] Developing Picturephone Service, Bell Telephone Magazine, Spring 1964, p14–21 (link).
[18] PICTUREPHONE / VISTAPHONE and others; The Evolution of Picturephone Service, Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation (link).
[19] [20] Images: Western Electric Picturephone® (Video Phone) Ahead of it's time - Another Bell Labs innovation!, The Porticus Center (link).
[21] Image: TrekCore, ibid. (link).
[22] Images: “MARCH OF PROGRESS, How the Future Looked in 1964: The Picturephone, By Damon Darlin, New York Times, June 26, 2014 (link)
Caption: In New York on Dec. 21, 1965, Keum Ja Kim, 15, a soloist with the World Vision Orphan Choir, used the Picturephone to audition for Robert Merrill, a star with the Metropolitan Opera, who was in Washington to sing at the White House.Credit...Bettmann/Corbis