SMS Text Messaging turns 19 years old today

London, Dec 4: Many many happy returns of the day to the Text Message, as you are 19-years-old today. According to Wikipedia, the first commercial SMS was sent by Neil Papworth over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on Dec 1992 wishing Richard Jarvis Merry Christmas.

The very first text message was actually grammatically sound. It read, "Merry Christmas," and other than the lack of a punctuation mark, there isn't much for linguists to complain about. Today, it's just as likely to be written as, "omg m3rry xma5!"

The technology behind the SMS text is 27-years old, having first developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert.

Eight years later, that the “Merry Christmas" text was sent, SMS technology has been used very extensively across the world. In 2010, SMS texts generated $114.6 billion in revenues worldwide. SMS text messaging has certainly evolved since then. According to Mobithinking.com, 8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011.

OneIndia News