Cell Phone Magic - A Leap From The Radio Telephone My introduction to the grand daddy of cell phones was while I was working as a Forest Fire Lookout man, in the early 1980s. One of my colleagues worked on a lookout tower, in radio range of a radio telephone repeater tower. So he could use a radio telephone, and free up more of the Forest Service frequency that I used. His radio telephone was about the size of a lap top. Cell phones are really down-sized radio telephones.