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The first text message was sent on 3 December 1992 by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer. He typed 'Merry Christmas' on a computer and sent it to the phone of Richard Jarvis, a Vodafone director who was at his office Christmas party.

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The story behind the card

Papworth worked for Sema Group, which was building a message centre for Vodafone's network in Britain, and the message was a test. Jarvis received it on an Orbitel 901, a handset that could display a text but not write one, so he could not reply. The idea of SMS, short for Short Message Service, was worked out in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand of Deutsche Telekom and Bernard Ghillebaert of France Télécom for GSM, the new European mobile phone standard. Hillebrand counted the characters in typical postcards and telex messages and decided that 160 characters were enough for most short messages, and that became the limit. The first service letting customers text each other started in Finland in 1993; at first, Nokia was the only maker whose phones could all send texts. The 160-character limit also gave rise to texting shorthand such as 'gr8' and 'c u'.

Türkçe oku
İlk kısa mesajı (SMS) 3 Aralık 1992'de 22 yaşındaki İngiliz mühendis Neil Papworth gönderdi. Papworth bir bilgisayardan “Merry Christmas” (Mutlu Noeller) yazdı ve mesajı, o sırada şirketin Noel partisinde olan Vodafone yöneticisi Richard Jarvis'in telefonuna yolladı.

Papworth, Vodafone'un İngiltere'deki şebekesi için bir mesaj merkezi kuran Sema Group'ta çalışıyordu ve bu mesaj bir denemeydi. Jarvis mesajı Orbitel 901 model bir telefonda okudu. Bu telefon gelen mesajı gösterebiliyor ama mesaj yazmaya izin vermiyordu; bu yüzden Jarvis yanıt veremedi. SMS'in (İngilizce Short Message Service, yani kısa mesaj servisi) fikrini 1984'te yeni Avrupa cep telefonu standardı GSM için Deutsche Telekom'dan Friedhelm Hillebrand ile France Télécom'dan Bernard Ghillebaert geliştirdi. Hillebrand, tipik kartpostallardaki ve teleks mesajlarındaki karakter sayılarını inceleyip 160 karakterin çoğu kısa mesaj için yeterli olduğuna karar verdi; sınır da bu oldu. Müşterilerin birbirine mesaj atabildiği ilk hizmet 1993'te Finlandiya'da başladı. İlk yıllarda bütün telefonları mesaj gönderebilen tek üretici Nokia'ydı. 160 karakter sınırı, “slm”, “nbr” gibi mesaj kısaltmalarının doğmasına da yol açtı.

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