SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Monday December 04 2017, @09:57PM
from the if-u-cn-rd-ths-thn-u-cn-txt-lk-a-pro dept.
from the if-u-cn-rd-ths-thn-u-cn-txt-lk-a-pro dept.
The world's first SMS text message was sent 25 years ago.
The man who sent the first ever text message 25 years ago has told British broadcaster Sky News that he is proud of his achievement.
British engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS (Short Message Service) from a computer to a mobile phone belonging to the then-director of Vodafone Richard Jarvis, he told Sky News.
The message read simply: "Merry Christmas."
Papworth said that Jarvis was unable to reply, because at that time it was not possible to send text messages from mobile phones, only to receive them.
And a happy new world.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Text Messaging Turns 25 Years Old
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 16 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @04:04AM (3 children)
I remember having read about SMS from the European press, and then asked a US provider when they would provide it. They said they wouldn't because "there was no demand". A few years later everybody was texting.
Fuck America. Always at the ass-end of deploying technical progress since Reagan. Always afraid to try anything new until dragged into the future.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @04:24AM
There. FTFY.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
I was going to say much the same. I remember in the late 90's reading press lamenting how behind Americans were in texting vs. Europeans. Most of that was industry shills trying to open new revenue streams with SMS.
I think it was more a function of the interface, because phones then didn't have QWERTY keyboards or touchscreen keyboards you could type on, only the number keys that you had to press repeatedly to toggle between letters. It was clumsy.
Blackberry was the first to crack the code because they provided the physical interface others were missing. Palm Pilots brought in the touchscreen path. Fast forward to where we are, and it looks like the Palm Pilot path triumphed.
Given how prevalent texting is today, I wonder if anyone has gone through and calculated the cost/benefit of the communication form. How much productivity has increased vs. time lost to road accidents because people text when they're supposed to be driving.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 05 2017, @06:52PM
T9 predictive texting solved that problem very well though. In many cases I think that was easier to use than a modern smartphone keypad, as long as you're entering actual text. The only place it would really suck is if you want to type in a complete URL or anything else with a lot of symbols.