THIS was the first SMS ever sent in the world 30 years ago; Read interesting history of short messages

The first SMS in the world was sent by an engineer Neil Papworth to a mobile phone 'Orbitel 901' owned by Richard Jarvis on 3 December, 1992.

'Merry Christmas' was the first SMS sent ever in the world.

New Delhi: ‘Merry Christmas’ was the first text-message ever sent in the world 30 years back in 1992. It was sent to a mobile phone owned by Richard Jarvis by a vodafone engineer named Neil Papworth on 3 December 1992 to  in Berkshire in the UK.

Short-Messaging service (SMS) is a text-based communication method to easily communicate among people via technology such as cellphones or computers. The SMS concept was first created in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillerbrand and Bernard Ghillebaert. It is called short as it supports a maximum character of 160 including letters, numbers or symbols in the Latin alphabet despite of what kind of techonolgy used.

Mr Jarvis had the latest phone in the market called Orbitel 901 on which he got the message of ‘Merry Christmas’. However, he didn’t reply to the message.

How does SMS technology work?

The SMS technology converts text into electrical signals and sends it to the nearest tower. Then it goes to the SMS centre. It will then send to the nearest cell tower of the receiver. Lastly, the tower sends the message to the recipient’s device.  

What is Orbitel 901?

The Orbitel 901 is the then state-of-the-art device supporting the advanced GSM technology and a major breakthrough in the history og GSM networks. It was launched in 1992 by UK-based phone maker Orbitel which was based in Basingtoke, Hampshire.