Meet the man who sent the first-ever text message

I’m very well, thank you, how are you?

Thanks! I feel old! It’s been an entire generation since I sent that message.

I was 22 years old, and it said: “Merry Christmas.” I was working as a developer and sent it to a director at Vodafone who was at his office Christmas party.

No! To be fair, there was no way to reply at the time, so I wasn’t offended.

Text messaging was not my idea or invention, I just happen to be lucky to have sent that first one.

Billions of people started using it to exchange quick messages, whereas before they would have had to make a phone call. Of course, it also introduced the danger of them concentrating on their keypad and screen, and not the road or lamppost.

Almost, yes. It was limited to 160 characters, but no one had yet invented text speak (txt spk) or emojis, and you could only send those very first texts from a computer to a phone, not the other way round.

I don’t use WhatsApp, but I use some of the social media messaging such as Skype and Facebook Messenger. And I still text when I need to get someone an urgent message.

I’ve received so many, I don’t remember! The best one I ever sent was announcing the birth of my daughter.

Not really! I send smileys the old school way, using characters such as colon, dash, close bracket. 🙂

It’s inevitable, really. Texting’s demise has been predicted for at least 10 years, but it took a lot longer than experts thought before usage started dropping. So many people now have data plans, and there’s a great deal of choice of online messaging platforms available.