The first ever text message was sent 21 years ago today and little did Neil Papworth from Vodafone know that over the next years how we communicate was going to be changed forever. On December 3, 1992 Neil Papworth, an engineer working in the UK, used a computer to send Richard Jarvis, one of Vodafone’s directors, the first ever text message. The short message service, or SMS, simply read “Merry Christmas”, but this was enough to change history. The twenty years following this message would be full of evolution and great change and now SMS is something that many people rely on heavily.
In an interview with ABC News Papworth describes the events of the first text message, and as you can see he really thinks not too much of it and more so that he was just doing his job.
“It happened that day that Vodafone wanted to try sending a message to Richard Jarvis, one of the directors there, who was at a Christmas party. So we sat at the computer and typed him a message and then sent him the message ‘Merry Christmas.’ For me it was just another day’s testing, it didn’t seem to be anything big at the time.”
Although it may only be twenty one years old, and many great things are generally in their prime at that time it appears as though text messaging has reached a peak. There is little to no evolution when it comes to the SMS / MMS space, and tons of things are happening around it. With tons of other options available like iMessage, BBM, WhatsApp and many more most users are finding it hard to pay for the service when they could use any number of others for free. Carriers are still charging an arm and a leg for SMS, but users can get away with any of the other services included in their data plan so there is little to no appeal, except for those who just use the basics.
Well known services like Twitter and Snapchat were built based around the SMS and MMS origins, but they have been able to take the basic idea and run with it and bring a whole new life to it. Users can interact with hundreds of thousands of others quickly and easily. While SMS may be past its prime at this point it is still something that many of us use several times a day, and that is all thanks to one test message that was sent 21 years ago today.
