Texting has become an integral part of everyone’s lives. Peopleof all ages send each other text messages for various reasons, with somepreferring text over phone calls. The world’s first text message was sentthirty years ago, on Dec 3, 1992.
The first text message
The message was sent by Neil Papworth, a British engineer anddeveloper who worked for Sema Group Telecom at the time, a company that created a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) for their customer,Vodaphone. We now know this as an SMS, an acronym for Short Message Service.
SMS is a form of text messaging. It is a text-basedcommunication tool used to contact and communicate with others using messageson cell phones or computers. It is responsible for sending, receiving, storing,and forwarding messages from mobile devices. SMS allows users to send textmessages from one device to another.
It works by signaling a nearby cellular tower over a controlchannel, and then into an SMS center. Then, the SMS resends the message to acellular tower closest to the recipient, going to the receiver’s phone.
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The text message service originated from radiotelegraphy, aform of radio communication that used coded signals such as Morse code. This waseventually defined by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), anetwork created by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, to identifythe procedures for digital cellular networks used by mobile devices.
Texting is the most widely used feature
As of last year, according to a Pew ResearchPoll, 97% of Americans own a cell phone. 85% of Americans own a smartphone, which is an increase from 35% in 2011. It seems that everybody sendstext messages on their smart phones, regardless of age, due to the fact thatnearly everyone has a cell phone. The number was extremely marginal in the yearthe first text message was sent. However, today, texting is the most widelyused smartphone feature.
Although the idea for texting was first pitched in 1984 by aFinnish engineer named Matti Makkonen, it was initially turned down. Eightyears later, the idea came to life, this time becoming the prototype for SMSthat is known today. Engineers incorporated SMS with the GSM network.
A Vodaphone engineer in Berkshire the U.K. sent the firsttext message in 1992. Neil Papworth sent the first ever text to his colleague,Richard Jarvis, who at the time was at a Christmas party. The phone Jarvisreceived the first text on was the novel Orbitel 901 handset, which weighedalmost 5 pounds (2.1 kg).
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Although the phone was considered large and bulky at thetime, it still made history as the device that received the first text message wasever, after being sent.
A message of holiday cheer
Neil Papworth worked for a team that was developing the SMCSfor Vodaphone. In order to test the communication service, he sent the world’s firsttext message, which was “Merry Christmas” in December 1992. At the time, he was 22years old and sent the initial message through a computer to Jarvis’ phone.
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To this day, the initial text has had a huge impact on SMSand the way people communicate on mobile devices. Every day, billions of text messagesare sent globally, with trillions of text messages sent worldwide every year.
Although there are new app-to-app messaging servers such as FacebookMessenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp, text messaging still remains one of the most commonly usedform of mobile phone messaging, and it all started with the first “Merry Christmas”text sent 30 years ago.
