Communicative Technology - Short Messaging Service (SMS) Essay

Communicative Technology - Short Messaging Service (SMS) - Essay Example The user should have activated the service of sending text messages, this activation involves paying a cost to some mobile network whereas on most mobile phone networks the activation is free. However, each text message costs some amount per text message, though nowadays mobile service networks offer packages that allow you to send a limited number of text messages for a cost in bulk. Lastly, the user who wants to send an SMS should know how to read and type a text message on the mobile phone and the model they have and should have a recipient to whom they want to send their texts to and they are good to go. (Illinois State University 2014). In 1984, a man named ‘Friedhelm Hillebrand’ was experimenting with casual sentences and questions on his typewriter at his house in Germany. Whenever he wrote a question or a sentence he made a count of the alphabets, number and the spaces in between them. This led to an odd discovery, which further on became the idea behind the length of an SMS. He noticed that every time he counted, the total quantity of characters was less than one sixty characters. (Gayomali, C. 2012). It is said that the first ever text message sent in the world was: ‘Merry Christmas’. It was sent by a man named Papworth. He was a computer designer at ‘Sema Group Telecoms’. Since the mobile phones at that time did not have the ability to type as there were no keyboards he used his computer to send the greeting to his buddy ‘Richard Jarvis’ who was employed at ‘Vodafone’. (Erikson, C. 2012). In 1993 ‘Nokia’ became the pioneer to launch the first ever mobile phone set which allowed the users to send text messages. However, there were limitations to the SMS service, firstly, it could only be typed through a numerical keypad by the multi-tap system and most importantly the SMS service was only limited to one network.  Ã‚