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Who Created Texting? The True History of SMS
Ever wondered who created texting? It’s not just the work of a single inventor with one lightbulb moment. It’s a chain of engineers, telecom researchers, and one very short “Merry Christmas” message that changed the way the world communicates.
Who Created Texting?
The history of texting as we know it can be traced to two key figures in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The basic idea of SMS was developed by a German engineer Friedhelm Hillebrand in 1985 and he is often credited for the now famous limit of 160 characters. Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert collaborated to establish the technical standard that would eventually enable SMS over the GSM network.
But the first person to send a text message was Neil Papworth, a British engineer working for Sema Group Telecoms. That message, to Vodafone’s Richard Jarvis, was ‘Merry Christmas’ and heralded the official birth of SMS as a working technology.
When Did Texting Begin?
- 1985 – The SMS concept and the 160-character limit are developed.
- 1992 – Neil Papworth sends the first SMS message.
- 1993 – British Telecom launches the first commercial SMS service, “Pegasus,” in the UK.
- 1993 – AirMail launches “Short Mail,” an early text messaging service in the US.
- 1999 – Cross-network texting becomes possible, and texting usage explodes.
- 2007 – The iPhone launch brings texting to the mainstream for all age groups.
Texting vs. Other Early Communication Technologies
| Technology | Inventor/Era | Core Mode | Still Used Today? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telegraph | Samuel Morse, 1830s | Electric pulses through wire | ✗ |
| Phone Call | Alexander Graham Bell, 1876 | Wire/Cell Voice | ✔ |
| Ray Tomlinson, 1971 | Computer-to-computer text | ✔ | |
| SMS Texting | Hillebrand/Papworth, 1985–1992 | Text over cellular, short | ✔ |
| WhatsApp/Messaging Apps | Internet era, 2009+ | Text/media over internet | ✔ |
From SMS to Business Messaging
What began as a 160-character novelty for two engineers has become a core business communications channel. Today’s platforms have evolved from personal texting to automated, compliant, mass-scale messaging for appointment reminders, alerts, and customer engagement.
That’s where Salesforce-native platforms like MessageBlink come in, leveraging the same SMS technology. Papworth has developed a fully integrated SMS and WhatsApp communication tool, built directly into Salesforce, without the need for third-party portals.