A Brief History of Short Message Services

A A BRIEF HISTORY OF KANA WALSH Throughout history, humans have found ways to communicate through text. Here is a brief history of how short messages have evolved. 1 ANCIENT TIMES Ancient people used smoke generated from fire to convey information. 2 1792 Claude Chappe created the optical telegraph. Messages were conveyed by visual signals from towers across France. 3 1837 Morse Code was created by Samuel F.B. Morse. It was the first successful experiment with an electrical recording telegraph. 4 1857 73 was sent in Morse Code. It meant "love and kisses." 5 1876 Alexander Graham Bell spoke on the world's first telephone. Thomas A. Watson was able to hear the message on the other end. 1898 6 Using a radio-controlled boat, Nikola Tesla demonstrated how to transmit a secure communication between transmitter and receiver. 1 1901 Guglielmo Marconi sent a wireless message over 2,000 miles from Cornwall to Newfoundland. It was the letter 's' in Morse Code 8 1930 Passengers onboard an ocean line in the Atlantic were able to speak to telephone customers in the United States by radio. 9 1946 First mobile telephone call made made in a vehicle with an installed phone. 10 1973 Motorola placed the first mobile phone call from a hand-held device prototype. 11 1982 The first emoticon is posted by Professor Scott Fahiman at Carnegie Mellon University. 12 1983 The first cell phone was available for customers, the DynaTAC 8000x from Motorola. It cost $3,995, equivalent to about $10k today. 13 1984 Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert created the initial concept of the SMS. Messages at the time were limited to 128 bytes to fit into existing signaling formats. 14 1992 Neil Papworth was the first person to send a SMS. He sent 'Merry Christmas' over the Vodaphone GSM network in the UK from a personal computer. MERRY:. "CHRISTMAS 15 2000 The first time that mobile news was delivered by using SMS in Finland. 16 2003 Short code was first introduced. Also, AT&T partnered with American Idol to introduce voting through text messages 17 2009 Sonja Kristianes, from Norway, types the fasted text message. He texted 'The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera,...' in 37.28 seconds. 18 2010 THESAURUS 'Text' is added as a verb to the Cambridge dictionary. 128 b 20 19 2012 The text message turned 20 years old. Source: Eric Lyday, "Texting Turns 20: The History of SMS"