The first mobile phone was the size of a dustbin lid!

London, May 14 (UNI) In this nano age 'small' is in. But it is hard to believe that the foremost model of today's handy mobile sets was the size of a dustbin lid and had a range of just half a mile.

The father of modern mobile phone Nathan Stubblefield invented world's first mobile phone in 1902. The self-styled electrician constructed a 120-feet mast in the orchard of his rural home-town of Murray, Kentucky , which transmitted speech from one telephone to another using magnetic fields.

Though the amount of wire required for the coils in the phones was far longer than what would be required to simply connect them, the invention allowed mobility.

''Nathan is the father of the mobile phone and I'm thrilled we can celebrate the 100-year anniversary of his invention that in some way went on to change the way the world communicates,'' Virgin's founder Sir Richard Branson said.

Unfortunately, Nathan's phones were not commercially successful in his lifetime and he died virtually penniless in 1928. He never sold a single unit of his design. He had always been obsessively secretive and never allowed his family to leave the farm without him, and loathed to let visitors on to his property for fear of his inventions being stolen, said a report in the Daily Mail.

But now, Virgin Mobile website has honoured Nathan by creating a page on him to mark the anniversary of his creation. Bob Locke, in his book 'Kentucky Farmer Invents Wireless Telephone!' has called Nathan the pioneer of mobile phones who had never been given enough credit for his invention.

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