Bizzare Facts

Before unlimited messaging plans, group chats, and emojis, the world's first text message was a profoundly simple, yet revolutionary, act of digital communication. On **December 3, 1992**, a 22-year-old British engineer named **Neil Papworth** sent the first **SMS (Short Message Service)** to his colleague, Richard Jarvis, who was attending a Christmas party.

Papworth didn't use a mobile phone to send the message; he used a computer connected to the Vodafone network, which was capable of sending the signal. The message was short and festive: **'Merry Christmas.'** Jarvis received the message on a clunky Orbitel 901 phone, which weighed about 4.6 pounds—more brick than phone.

Ironically, Jarvis couldn't even reply, as mobile phones of the time were not yet configured to send texts, only receive them. This simple, two-word holiday greeting marked the birth of a technology that would transform global communication, giving rise to an entirely new, shorthand way of interacting that would define the next two decades of mobile technology.