PELL JUNCTION, Mo. — The Pell Junction City Council voted 4-1 on Wednesday night to formally recognize resident Gene Halloway as the inventor of the foldable iPhone and to send Apple an invoice for $21,989, hours after the company unveiled its first foldable phone at an event in California.
The special meeting was called to order at 7:02 p.m. with all five council members present. Apple had announced the iPhone Duo, which opens from a 5.4-inch outer display to a 7.6-inch inner display, at a starting price of $1,999, earlier that day. Councilwoman Rhonda Meech, who requested the special session, said she had seen the announcement on her phone at lunch and “immediately thought of Gene.” The council’s resolution, No. 2026-41, notes that Halloway, 63, has folded 11 iPhones in half since 2014, beginning with an iPhone 6 that he sat on in the cab of his pickup that October.
“I didn’t invent it so much as sit on it. But you could say that about most inventions,” Halloway said during the public comment period, which lasted 22 minutes. He then presented the 11 phones to the council in a tackle box.
According to the minutes, the phones were entered into evidence as Exhibits A through K and examined by each council member in turn. All 11 remain operational in their folded state, Halloway told the council, and he demonstrated by placing a call from the iPhone XR, which has been folded into a triangle since 2019, to the city clerk’s desk phone, which rang, although the clerk later confirmed that the desk phone has not been connected to a line since the city switched carriers. Exhibit G, an iPhone 8 folded twice, now receives only calls from 2017. Exhibit K, folded four times and roughly the size of a sugar cube, receives text messages addressed to Halloway’s truck. The council took a 14-minute recess at 7:51 p.m. after Exhibit K began to ring.
Councilman Dwayne Purcell cast the dissenting vote, arguing that Halloway’s phones fold “outward, like a wallet somebody stepped on,” and that Apple’s folds inward. A motion by Purcell to amend the resolution to recognize Halloway as the inventor of “a foldable iPhone, broadly” failed 1-4.
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said Halloway joins a long line of overlooked folders. “The scholarship dates the first folded telephone to 1881, when a switchboard operator in Ohio closed a drawer on one,” Achterberg said. “She was never credited. The drawer was credited. That is the history of folding in this country.”
Walt Brosky, who attended the meeting in a flag shirt, spoke in support of the resolution and asked that the minutes reflect that he has a cousin in Cupertino. The minutes reflect it.
The invoice, which totals $1,999 for each of Halloway’s 11 phones, was prepared for mailing Thursday morning by City Clerk Ann Toller, who said she had addressed it to Apple and, “to be safe,” to California. The council has scheduled a follow-up vote for Sept. 23 on whether to send a second invoice, folded.