Text messaging is hardly an activity exclusive to teenagers anymore. Almost everybody has used instant messaging whenever emails or phone calls would be too slow or cumbersome. The idea of messaging has evolved greatly over the years, even before cell phones became popular.
Sending messages is a convenient way to collaborate with other team members, hence why businesses today still use messaging services for internal work purposes. But first, where did this trend in telecommunications start off?
How Text Messaging Started Off
“Merry Christmas” was the first text message ever sent in 1992, and it was typed on a PC since phones at the time didn’t have proper keyboards. The message was between Neil Papworth, a Sema Group Telecoms developer, and Richard Jarvis, a Vodafone employee. Prior to that event, SMS was mainly used for network notifications.
As SMS evolved, the hardware first had to catch up with the software. You probably were around when phones only had numeric keypads, and you had to press the same key multiple times to achieve a single letter. T9 predictive text technology helped speed things up, but the real evolution came in 1997.
