It was Dec. 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth, a text engineer in London, first texted “Merry Christmas” to Vodafone VOD.LN -0.12% employee Richard Jarvis, who was at a Christmas party across town.
The text message - the technology that spawned a new language of punctuation signs and shortcut spellings - is 20 years old TODAY
It was possible because the new generation of digital mobile phones incorporated letters on the number pad so that customers could put names of contacts into the phone book on their phones.
One year later Nokia NOK1V.HE -0.16% introduced the first mobile phone that allowed customers to send text messages to others within the same network. Then in 1999, text messages could cross networks for the time. A new fever was born.
College kids and students embraced the new inexpensive technology, despite the fiddly operation of clicking though numbers to reach the desired letter of the alphabet. Growth in the service was dramatic. In 2002, mobile subscribers around the world sent more than 250 billion SMSs, according to research firm Informa Telecoms and Media.
Read more about it at: Tech Europe
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