“Was there even a Moore’s law in the early 80’s?”
Yes. Gordon Moore postulated the ability to increase the number of transistors on an integrated circuit, that it would double every 2 years, in the late 1960s. The marvel is that “Moore’s Law” has held true, more or less, from that time until even today.
Just because Govt regulated radio frequencies, dont get the nutty idea that Govt was a part of that innovation. The cell phone was invented in the private sector, by Motorola (and inspired by Star Trek!!!).
Cell phones are amazingly more powerful now than 20 years ago because we pack a lot more on chips than 20 years ago and they use much less power.
Yeah, the whole star trek thing iirc the guy wanted to call co-eds on a phone in his car.