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In the 1980s engineers including Friedhelm Hillebrand, proposed the core concept of short personal messaging during the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) standardization efforts -
Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert formalized the theory and protocols for SMS within the Franco-German GSM cooperative, using insights from Hillebrand's typewriter sessions. -
Hillebrand proposed the 160-character limit, based on typing messages on a typewriter, which became the standard for SMS
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The first SMS text message in history is sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, saying Merry Christmas -
The following year, Nokia released the first cellphone with an SMS feature -
In March, Neil Papworth launched the UK’s first commercial text messaging service. The service allowed users to send short messages with up to 160 alphabetic and numeric characters via mobile phones. Latter in November, “Short Mail” debuted as the first commercial American text messaging service.
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Cross-network texting became commercially available, leading to widespread adoption.
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Phone companies charged people between $0.10 to $0.20 per message, which made texting very popular.
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Texting across the world began to see a steady decline, with messages from instant-messaging apps concurrently spiking.