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from the say-it-in-160-characters-or-less dept.
BBC reports that Matti Makkonen, who helped to launch the worldwide sensation of texting, has died at the age of 63 after an illness.
Makkonen became known as the father of SMS after developing the idea of sending messages via mobile networks. Despite the nickname, he was often quick to point out that he did not invent the technology single-handedly.
In 2012, he told BBC News - in an SMS interview - that he believed texting in some form would be around "forever". Speaking on the 20th anniversary of the first text message, Makkonen said that he considered the development of SMS a joint effort and that it was Nokia who helped to popularise the service. "The real launch of the service, as I see it, was when Nokia introduced the first phone that enabled easy writing of messages (Nokia 2010 in 1994)," he said.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:48PM
he was often quick to point out that he did not invent the technology single-handedly.
This is what actual engineers who contribute to technological progress do. People who get rich on technological progress do the opposite: claim to be a genius inventor while building a PR machine to push that image everywhere, freely dismissing the labors of those who actually developed things. Edison, Jobs, Ford. They're names famous in the collective consciousness as inventors, but they mostly just paid engineers to do what engineers do.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:15PM
Absolutely! For an example of that, take Dennis Ritchie & Ken Thompson: Neither of them claimed to be the sole inventor of Unix, and if either one of them had chances are the other one would likely have been pissed off enough that they stopped working together.
The reason engineers have a tough time of things in business is that they're typically the only people in most organizations that are not professional liars [dilbert.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @03:36PM
I invented a really excellent mousetrap.
The prototype has been sitting in my box in my garage for the last ten years.