
Man Who Sent World's First Text Message 25 Years Ago - davesailer
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4431677/it-didn-t-feel-momentous-at-all-says-man-who-sent-world-s-1st-text-message-25-years-ago-1.4431688
======
gumby
It's amazing it took so long to arrive in the USA.

Less amazing is how long it took to take off once it _did_ arrive: cost model.
Calling a mobile was quite expensive in Europe, so SMS was a big money saver.
While in the US calling a mobile costs the same as calling any other number
(you pay, or perhaps "paid" these days, for the privilege of having your phone
number on a limited-capacity radio device rather than connected to a pair of
wires).

On the cost front, this isn't a flame about Europe-vs-US. But until the iPhone
utterly reconfigured the mobile market, the US was a mobile backwater. I
really think the cost structure and lack of competition was the reason.

~~~
timthorn
It took a long time to take off in the UK too, despite heading calling party
pays. SMS enablement was a subscription service - £5/month from memory - and
initially there want interconnect between mobile networks so texts were
limited to those on the same provider. On the other hand, the original plans
were all you can eat, and pager gateways worked for SMS too.

It took off when interconnect was sorted.

~~~
Zenst
Initially it was within the same network, I believe Orange (previously
Hutchinsons, then merged with EE, who themselves known as T-Mobile) was the
first to offer a consumer service, called Orange Messaging. As an aside they
also offered a second line on the same phone,meaning you had 2 number an
option not offered these days alas.

But nice trick was to set a foreign SMSC, this not only enabled you to send
SMS to other UK networks, but also didn't charge you. Circa 1998 era.

~~~
dazc
Back in the day, Orange were truly innovative although their promise of a
wire-free future was a bit optimistic.

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ezekg
> Plus, it was short. Text messages originally came with a 160-character
> limit. That's why people developed text message shorthand, like lol for
> "laughing out loud."

Is this correct? I always thought it was coined on some bulletin board or
chatroom.

~~~
themodelplumber
I think it was BBS in ancestry but maybe they're saying "That's why" as in
"That kind of situation is why..."

I was surprised to learn that "tnx" was an early morse code convention (lol is
'hihi'). Oh and seeing the phrase "tricked out" in a book from I think the
1800s (via Gutenberg.org) was also surprising.

~~~
Stratoscope
"tks" is also a common abbreviation for "thanks" in Morse.

A laugh is actually just "hi", although sometimes it would be repeated if
conditions were noisy. Then it would be "hi hi" with a space in between, not
all sent as one word.

So why was "hi" used to indicate a laugh in Morse in the first place? There's
no obvious connection with either the word "hi" or the individual letters "h
i".

The reason is that the meaning here is not in the actual letters or word, it's
the _sound_ of "hi" in Morse:

    
    
      • • • •    • •
    

[http://mg.to/audio/hi.wav](http://mg.to/audio/hi.wav)

It just sounds funny to hear that. A bit reminiscent of the rhythm of the old
phrase "shave and a haircut, two bits" but more concise.

Oddly, many hams to this day also use "hi" or "hi hi" in voice contacts
_instead of laughing_. I guess that's not too different from saying "lol" out
loud!

"es" is another interesting abbreviation. This of course is the Spanish word
for "and", but hams always use "es" instead of "and" in Morse. It's one letter
shorter, but that's not the real reason. Here's "and":

    
    
      • ———    ——— •    ——— • •
    

vs. "es":

    
    
      •    • • •
    

Much shorter and easier to send!

~~~
ghgr
> This of course is the Spanish word for "and",

I'm confused. The Spanish word for "and" is "y". Maybe you meant that hams use
"es" instead of "is"?

~~~
Stratoscope
Actually, I was the one who was confused! That's what I get for commenting
late at night.

Now I'm not sure what the derivation of "es" is. It's definitely used to mean
"and", but I don't know why.

In any case, thanks for the correction.

Update: I just figured out where I got the mixed up Spanish connection! There
_is_ a Spanish word used as a Morse code abbreviation, and in fact it's used
in every QSO. It's not "es", it's "de" which means "from" both in Spanish and
on CW/Morse. So I had the right idea, wrong word.

hi hi tks es 73 de WJ6V

------
Nokinside
SMS is important part of communication infrastructure in the third world. You
would be amazed how complex services can run on SMS.

I think we who live in the industrialized societies have fallen behind mobile
technology if we measure it by its impact on society and cultural innovation.
We have better and newer technologies, but they are improving productivity and
shaping the world less and less.

In contrast, many developing world countries are developing their society
around mobile technology. it's changing developing world Africa, India,
Eurasia, etc. Large areas of the world will never have landlines, fiber, ASDL
etc. Just the mobile masts with microwave links from village to village or in
the middle of a slum.

I love the "Running light without overbyte" approach that removes distractions
and provide working services that are actually compact and revolutionary. They
improve productivity and change the society.

------
noncoml
The life of SMS is amazing.

It went from state of the art technology, to the de facto communication
channel for teens and youth, at least in Europe, to being obsolete in less
than 25 years!

~~~
staticelf
It's not obsolete. It is still the only way you can be pretty sure the
recipient receives your message since it works on every phone in circulation.
This is used heavily by shops online, postal services etc etc.

Many telecom operators also offers basically unlimited texts and calls for a
fixed price which makes it often an easier way to communicate than to figure
out what service person x is currently on. I use sms way more than I
communicate on any other digital service. I would like for everyone to use
Signal or something but so far I only have 1 contact there. And by using sms,
at least I know it is not indexed and searched by an american company to sell
me more ads. Also, I live in a country with large, pretty empty areas. In
several of these locations the 3G/4G-networks are often unavailable but
sending a simple sms works just fine.

~~~
fma
I also don't need to ask... Should I contact you on WhatsApp, FB, Wechat,
Hangouts, Twitter or whatever the shiny thing of the day is. Just give me your
phone number.

~~~
nicoburns
Indeed. It also works reliably internationally. China has blocked Facebook and
WhatsApp, but SMS still works.

~~~
_acme
Doesn't iMessage work internationally? iMessage just works. It's beautiful,
especially when everyone you know has an iPhone. And I'd say China blocking
some services is more China's fault than that of WhatsApp (terrible name).

~~~
fma
Yes, it works internationally. .. As long as you have a data connection.

------
kerpele
I'm having a hard time believing someone would have had a phone capable of
receiving text messages at a Christmas party if nobody had ever before
successfully sent (and therefore received) one.

~~~
dfox
I have feeling that the event in the article is about first message that was
sent acrosss production network and with the intention of SMS being user
accessible (and paid) service.

~~~
kerpele
But it was still sent from a PC instead of another phone so not really the
commercial use-case. And regardless, why would they not mention it instead of
making this guy sound like he actually wrote the whole sms system?

~~~
dfox
In that times the first usecase probably was to displace pagers.

GSM lore says that SMS originated as network debugging/management feature,
which I don't think is exactly true. I suspect that the thing was originally
an demonstration for GSM's capability of transfering arbitrar-ish user packet
data in control channels (of which SMS is to this day only usage I know of),
which got implemented in handsets because it was part of specification and
then it was used for network management messages and then got commercialized
as SMS.

It is not improbable that this guy actually wrote first implementation of the
network side of SMS (ie. SMSC) that was actually useful for commercial
customers, as the low-level SMS protocol only handles message transfer between
network and handsets and does not specify network behavior or even addressing
of subscribers.

------
JohnTHaller
And yet we still don't have reliable text messaging in the US. On T-Mobile, I
lose a good chunk of text messages sent to me from other networks that are
longer than 159 characters.

~~~
_acme
Use iMessage (or similar service). Texting beyond 159 characters never works
reliably.

------
lin_lin
I remember getting my first mobile, one of the big pitches for it was "no cost
to receive sms messages." It's funny to look back on it now.

------
woliveirajr
And then we needed some app (whatsapp, you know) to be revolutionary because
it allowed to send unlimited messages to some phone number, including photos!

I couldn't understand when my friends were excited about the "new program"
that was doing exactly what any SMS / MMS should do. Then, few months later, I
was the last one to install it, because it was the only way of comunicating
with friends.

~~~
malikNF
Your friends were probably excited because they didnt have a character limit
when sending a text, they didn't have to pay for each message they sent, they
could share images, videos. All of that for the fraction of the cost of
sending a text message.

~~~
woliveirajr
I would even include the better interface, as it had a better look than the
regular SMS screen. Character limit wasn't the deal because their whatsapp
message are still short. And even the cost of messages was negligible, because
the main point of the cell phone plans were unlimited messages.

And photos and videos were available as email, skype, messeger...

I would bet that here (in my country), SMS wasn't sexy because of the
interface, email wasn't that real-time conversation (and you needed to know
the e-mail address).

Needing just the phone number (that was a common thing to share), not using
e-mails (that was seen as too tech, too formal) and having a better look than
the SMS interface was the point. All other features were just a bonus.

------
ttoinou
My dad worked on the GSM in the 80s so I doubt that the first SMS is only from
1992...

~~~
lb1lf
SMS simply wasn't an option on the earlier GSM handsets; I remember in 1996 or
so in one of the early GSM adopters -Norway - when shopping for a phone, the
salesman showed me two identical-looking Nokia sets, a $100 price difference
between them - one could send SMS, the other only receive them. I went with
the more expensive one, as the cheapest monthly plans at the time ($6/month
fee) priced daytime calls at $.85/minute, making SMS (at $0.15 a pop) a good
deal.

Edit - the handset I was upgrading from could only receive SMS; I believe my
father's handset at the time couldn't even receive them - but that may have
been a carrier limitation, not down to the handset capabilities.

~~~
ttoinou
The argicle state that the 'first SMS' engineer sent it from its home
computer, so it's not about how it got to the market but who used the
technology first. I'm pretty sure thoses who invented SMS did send SMS way
before the guy in the article. Looks like advertising for canadian telecom
tech, to embelish history.

