Merry Christmas, 3 weeks in advance. Indeed to be precise and quote it verbatim, “MERRY CHRISTMAS” (that's right, all caps). This is the text, sent on 3 December 1992, of the first SMS in history. Or rather of prehistory, given that in just 28 years that type of message has been largely superseded by the advent of the Internet, smartphones and online chats. The first SMS (acronym of Short Message Service) was therefore always sent in 1992, but not from one cell phone to another, as then became the rule in common use: it was sent from a computer to a Vodafone GSM network cell phone, by the British engineer Neil Papworth.
For the first message from mobile to mobile, however, we will have to wait a few more months: it was forwarded in the first half of 1993 by a Nokia intern. Over the years, SMS has become a communication tool that has made history: it is estimated that active users of SMS were over 3.5 billion at the end of 2010, i.e. approximately 80% of all mobile phone subscribers. In the first half of 2004, the annual traffic volume (worldwide) was around 500 billion SMS; four years later, messages sent reach 4.100 trillion. More recently, the stratospheric average of over 20 billion SMS sent daily was reached, to then inexorably leave room for WhatsApp.
From the year 2005 onwards, it begins the use of SMS as a means of donations to non-profit organizations and/or humanitarian organizations: with this system in Italy alone, for example, over 26 million euros are collected to be donated as support for Asia, hit by the 2004 tsunami. Another gem: also via the web messages can be forwarded. The first site in the world that allows sending SMS was born on February 24, 1997.
