The very first text message was sent 31 years ago, what did it say?

2023-12-14 15:00:01

In case you didn’t know, SMS celebrated its 31st birthday this December. More precisely, it was on December 3, 1992 that the very first SMS was sent. As told in a BBC article, this was sent by Neil Papworth, a Vodafone engineer, to the United Kingdom to test the technology. Its content: “Merry Christmas”.

Indeed, to test SMS, Papworth used an Orbitel 901, a device that weighs 2.1 kg, to send a text message to Richard Jarvis, a supervisor who was at a Christmas party. Obviously, SMS didn’t immediately take off following this first test.

#History : The first SMS (Merry Christmas!) was sent from a PC to an Orbitel 901 on December 3, 1992…
▷ pic.twitter.com/7dUIeHyVKg

— Fabrice HEIDET (@FabTechnoMelO) April 15, 2017

On its website, Vodafone explains that it took a year, in 1993, for Nokia to introduce SMS functionality to its phones. “In 1999, seven years following Neil’s first SMS message, SMS messages might finally be exchanged across multiple networks, propelling them to greater popularity than ever before,” says the operator.

A rise, then decline

In any case, when he sent the very first SMS, Neil Papworth did not expect the success of this technology. “In 1992, I had no idea how popular texting would become and that it would give rise to emoticons and messaging apps used by millions of people. It wasn’t until recently that I told my kids that I sent that first text message. Looking back, it’s clearer to see that the Christmas message I sent was a pivotal moment in mobile history.”he said according to a Vodafone publication in 2017.

According to data published by Statista, 38.83 billion SMS messages were sent in the first quarter of 2012. But this figure fell to 9.52 billion in the first quarter of 2022. And the decline is expected to continue, since smartphone users now favor instant messaging apps, rather than old-fashioned SMS, which are not encrypted. In addition, businesses will use SMS less and less to communicate with their customers (or to send verification codes).

It should also be remembered that on Android and iOS, the default applications for texting use more modern protocols. And soon, SMS won’t even be necessary to send a text from an Android smartphone to an iPhone.

• The SMS celebrated its 31st anniversary this December
• The first ever SMS was sent by a Vodafone employee to wish Merry Christmas
• SMS had its moment of glory, but today this technology is outdated

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#text #message #years