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A quiet moment in telecom history turned into a communication revolution that changed phones, culture, and eventually the digital economy.
On December 3, 1992, a simple message that read “Merry Christmas” marked a historic shift in global communication.
Neil Papworth, then a 22-year-old engineer, sent the message from his computer to the Orbitel 901 phone of Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.
Papworth was working on Vodafone UK’s Short Message Service Centre as part of the now-defunct Sema Group Telecoms. At the time, he saw it as routine work rather than a milestone.
“It didn’t feel momentous at all,” he later said in an interview with CBC in 2017. “For me it was just getting my job done on the day and ensuring that our software that we’d been developing for a good year was working OK.”
The idea for SMS started years before the first message. In 1984, Finnish engineer Matti Makkonen proposed the concept at a conference in Copenhagen.
A year later, Friedhelm Hillebrand at Deutsche Telekom suggested a 160-character limit after studying everyday written messages.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute began developing formal standards by 1991, and the first message followed a year later in the United Kingdom.
At the time, mobile technology was shifting from analog to digital with GSM networks. Phones did not have keyboards, so Papworth had to send the message through his computer. Jarvis received it while attending a Christmas party.
The first text message in history was sent 33 years ago today.
It read, “Merry Christmas.” pic.twitter.com/Ak9M8uEeBL
Shortly after, Papworth got a confirmation call from the event that proved the test worked.
Early SMS relied on 7-bit encoding and routing through SMS centres that stored and forwarded messages when phones were out of range.
Nokia helped push SMS from experiment to mainstream. In 1994, the company released a handset that allowed users to both send and receive messages.
Adoption grew slowly at first because phones were costly and carriers focused on voice services.
By the late 1990s, texting surged especially among younger users.
T9 predictive typing made input easier, and prepaid plans made texting cheaper. Network providers later enabled cross-network messaging, accelerating mass usage.
By February 2001, users in the United Kingdom sent around one billion texts every month. Charges reached 10 pence per message, generating major revenue.
By 2010, the International Telecommunications Union reported trillions of messages sent yearly, turning SMS into a global cultural habit that shaped abbreviations like LOL and BRB.
Messaging eventually moved beyond SMS. Services like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber allowed free messaging with photos, emojis, unlimited characters, and encryption. As smartphones spread, SMS declined sharply after 2012.
In 2021, the original “Merry Christmas” message resurfaced in a new form. Vodafone auctioned the first SMS as a nonfungible token (NFT).
The digital artifact sold for €107,000 ($124,000). The buyer also received a digital frame to display the message. Vodafone directed the proceeds to the United Nations refugee agency.
SMS may have faded from daily use, but the moment it began still stands as a turning point in digital communication.
Aamir is a seasoned tech journalist with experience at Exhibit Magazine, Republic World, and PR Newswire. With a deep love for all things tech and science, he has spent years decoding the latest innovations and exploring how they shape industries, lifestyles, and the future of humanity.
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