With the national median age being 37 years, a bare majority of the country’s population can remember life in what might strike young people as a bleak, dark and difficult age. Practically unimaginable today, there was a time when the ubiquitous cell phone didn’t exist. In 1969, Amtrak offered a version of cellular technology, using payphones on its Metroliners, but that was about it for years to come. The first modern cell phone was introduced on this date in 1983 in Chicago. It was demonstrated in a call to Alexander Graham Bell’s grandson, in Berlin, Germany at the time. This phone sold for a mere $3,995. In 1990, there were just over 5 million people in the country with cell phones. By 2000, that number was nearly 110 million. Now, 89 percent of American households have cell phones. Profile America is in its19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.