On December 3, 1992, a 22-year-old British software engineer named Neil Papworth sat at a desktop computer in his office and sent the first text message ever transmitted — two words long, reading simply “Merry Christmas” — to a Vodafone executive at an office party across town, who couldn’t reply because mobile phones at the time had no way to send texts back

On 3 December 1992, in a Vodafone office west of London, a 22-year-old British software engineer named Neil Papworth sat at a desktop computer terminal, typed “Merry Christmas” using full words rather than the now-conventional abbreviations, and pressed send. The message travelled through the Vodafone cellular network and arrived seconds later on a four-and-a-half-pound Orbitel [...] The post On December 3, 1992, a 22-year-old British software engineer named Neil Papworth sat at a desktop comput