My grandfather was a field engineer with the utility company in Aalesund, Norway; they got one of the first cellular phones (of sorts) in the Aalesund area sometime in the early sixties.

As he recalled it, the phone occupied most of the trunk of the Ford Anglia they used to get around town. It was a fully manual affair - they had a calling channel where the operator would say something like 'Subscriber 11, phone call for you on channel 4' - subscriber 11 (and anyone else who cared to listen in) would then turn a dial to channel 4 and get on with their conversation. After the call ended, they had to manually revert to the calling channel.

There only being a handful of subscribers had its perks - once when he was on his way to lunch with the head of the local branch of the phone company, when they heard on the phone official's cellular that a call was incoming for my grandfather.

He simply answered using the other guy's phone, and the operator chuckled and said that was OK, she recognised his voice and would bill the airtime to the utility company's account.