On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history was sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, who used a personal computer to send “Merry Christmas” to a coworker’s phone. The coworker couldn’t reply, because that functionality didn’t exist yet; he had to call him. A year later, it hit the market on cell phones, but you were limited to 160 characters, you could only end to someone in your own provider network, and you had to type via the numeric keypad–birthing a whole new series of acronyms.
Thanks, Neil! And we can’t wait to see what the next few years bring.
