Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for Sema Group (now Airwide Solutions), sent the first text message to a mobile phone on December 3, 1992, from his personal computer to the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis.
The text message read “Merry Christmas” (note, not “mry xmas” as it would most likely be abbreviated now, 20 years after this first text).
Omnipoint Communications, the first GSM carrier in America, set up the first text messaging service in the United States. Omnipoint soon after offered the first texting between the US and the rest of the world, starting a 160 character micro-blog trend that Twitter would make even more popular. (Twitter reserves 20 characters for non-message content and maintains a 140 character limit.)
And we all know by the year 3,000 it’ll be pronounced “Ex-mas”:
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
