25 anniversary of the first SMS: the technology that changed communication
The world’s first SMS message consisted of two words: “merry Christmas!” After 25 years, they send about 25 billion a day.
On December 3 1992 a 22-year-old Briton Neil Papworth, engineer of the company Sema Group Telecoms involved in technological developments for ordering telecommunications giant Vodafone sent from your computer the world’s first SMS message.
Text sent to mobile phone of Vodafone Director Richard Jarvis, consisted of two words: “merry Christmas!”.
Jarvis at the time was on the pre-Christmas corporate party. Soon, his colleague called the office Sema Telecoms and reported that the test was successful.
According to Papworth, he had no idea that he was involved in the historic event.
Meanwhile, the light appeared the technology soon changed the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
How it all began
Most of the inventions that changed the world for the last 150 years were either made in USA or put them on a industrial basis. But text messages (short message service, “short message service”) is a purely European achievement.
The idea of transmission via telephone, short text first proposed in 1984, the late Matti Makkonen of the Finnish branch of Nokia Networks at a scientific conference in Copenhagen in 1984.
The idea picked up and developed by Friedhelm, Hillebrandt from Deutsche Telecom. A year later he proposed a format of 160 characters in the Latin alphabet including spaces, valid to this day. According to the observations of Hildebrandt, this was the usual length of a greeting card.
Innovation is interested in the Frenchman Bernard Gilbert from PTT, the Norwegian Finn Trosby from Telenor, the British Kevin Holley from Cellnet and Ian Harris from Vodafone.
I think SMS is not his personal achievement but the result of a collaborative collection of ideas.Matti Makonen
He declared bi-Bi-si in 2012 (the interview took place in the form of SMS).
Seven years the idea remained commercially untapped. Over the enthusiasts laughed: why chat on the phone if you can talk to?
In 1991, the European Institute of telecommunications standards (ETSI) has allocated funds for the establishment of a mechanism for exchange of text information between mobile subscribers.
Most of the work by the time was done. To bring the invention to the mind, it took about a year and a half.
Nokia soon released a new model of mobile phone, the call which was encrypted in Morse code abbreviation for “SMS”.
The technology of the new Millennium
It is impossible to say when the innovation became widespread, but most experts believe the watershed in 2000.
By this time, mobile phones have ceased to be an attribute of professionals and the rich. Consumers worried about the bills from the operators, and perhaps the most important advantage of text messages of support — low cost.
There is another advantage: the opportunity to send a message to off outside the service area or away from the owner either by another phone call. At the first opportunity, the recipient will receive it. No need to call.