Just two days ago, On December 3, SMS celebrated his 25th birthday. This birthday is extremely low-key, so that many people do not know.

In 1982, the concept of text messaging was introduced by a man named Matti Markkonen, whose emergence was linked to a feature now called caller ID. Phones back then could display the number of the call on the screen, so the problem was… Why can’t text be displayed on mobile phones?

With this idea and the launch of the future Mobile Congress, SMS was put on the development agenda.

Although it was put on the development agenda, it was still a concept, and the GSM mobile phones used at that time did not support SMS, and the SMS protocol just established was only used as voicemail recipients.

But it was no trouble for a fussy engineer. In 1985 FiredHelm Hillebrand and dozens of colleagues studied the optimal length of a standard SMS protocol.

The research found that it was possible to use the existing radio channel, which was only used to send intensity alerts like cell phones, and for a long time, the link was idle, and it was attached to the system, so it worked all the time without consuming any resources of the system. So, the SMS channel is fixed.

The study also determined the perfect length of a text message to be 160 characters. This standard is based on the writing length of postcards. Studies show that most postcards contain no more than 160 characters. And 160 characters is a very intuitive message length.

Note: A text message can hold 140 bytes, which is about 160 7-bit characters, or 140 8-bit characters, while Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters, which account for 2-byt>e, can hold 70 characters. (Using Unicode system). These do not include additional system information. — Wikipedia

It took seven years for the technology to finally come of age before 22-year-old Heil Papworth sent the world’s first text message “Merry Christmas” via his computer. This day is remembered as the birth of SMS.

But it took operators a long time to figure out that they could generate profits by charging for text messages, which in those days were no less than WeChat and WhatsApp. SMS is popular among younger users, and operators are making a lot of money from the new phenomenon.

By 2003, seven billion text messages had been sent worldwide.

You’ve all voted for Super Girl by text message. Who did you vote for?

“Send code 888 to 12509 XXXX to order this ringtone” should also be done.

“Enter the name of the person you like and your name to 1066 XXXX, you can get the predestined relationship information between you” this kind of thing should also do a lot.

Thanks to the development of instant messaging tools such as WeChat and WhatsApp, we no longer send text messages.

But I wonder why there are more and more messages in text messages… 🤔 🤔 🤔