The SMS turns 20 today. Back in 1992 on December 3 the first SMS was sent as a simple Christmas greeting. Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer, sent the first telenote message ‘Merry Christmas’ from his computer to technical director Richard Jarvis’s Orbitel 901 phone.
In 2012, as SMS celebrates its 20th anniversary, text messaging has surpassed all conventional means of communication, and at the same time, believed by many to have reached its point of saturation.
SMS is one of the most common forms of communication across the world. Globally, 4 million people use the text messaging service to communicate with each other. It obliterated the conventional style of writing and introduced symbols and abbreviated form with shortened words to express thoughts.
