The first message was sent on this day 25 years ago

Indeed there have been many changes in just a quarter of a century.

On December 3, 1992, Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old software programmer tested Short Message Service (SMS), gave his customer Vodafone a message to Richard Jarvis, Vodafone's then director. Interestingly, this first SMS was sent from a computer with 'Merry Christmas' content. (Merry Christmas).

In 1993, Nokia introduced a feature to send SMS messages on its phones, a limit of 160 characters and a "beep" to notify when new messages were available. By 1999, text messages could be sent between different telecommunications networks and the first emoji icon was created in Japan.

The first message was sent on this day 25 years ago Picture 1
The message is 25 years old

Now we are used to chatting, texting everyday. But in the 90s or early 2000s, this was a very new way and the character limit made people think of ways to abbreviate such as 'lol' for 'laughing out loud' or using keyboard characters to represent Emotion - precursor to emoji later.

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Papworth said: 'In 1992, I did not think the message would become as popular as it is now, as it would create emoji and messaging applications that are millions of users. I just told my kids that I was the first to send the message. Looking back, it was clear that that Christmas message was an important moment in mobile history. '

So a quarter of a decade has passed, messages have now become the dominant mode of communication worldwide.