A
Art Mann
Guest
INGRID PERITZ
MONTREAL — The Globe and Mail
Had he known he was ushering in a global phenomenon, perhaps Neil Papworth of Montreal would have made his first words more momentous.
The bespectacled Mr. Papworth was a 22-year-old engineer on the job one December day when he was assigned to do something novel: Send a text message. And so Mr. Papworth, then an employee at a software company in England, typed out the words that would launch a trillion thumbs.
He wrote, “Merry Christmas.”
As far as inaugural messages go, it doesn’t rank with “What has God wrought,” which Samuel Morse composed for his first telegraph. Even Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here” had more gravitas.
Still, Mr. Papworth’s deed 20 years ago this month brought about an unheralded revolution of its own. In the two decades since, text messaging – or SMS, for short message service – has brought down U.S. legislators, spawned political intrigue, and been used to set up trysts and to vote for TV contestants.
Texts helped organize the protests of the Arab Spring and connect rebels in Syria; one photograph shows a Syrian insurgent holding a machine gun in one hand, a cellphone with his thumb poised over it in the other.
And for better or worse, texting has also spawned its own language. Its adherents fervently believe texting is gr8 4 U.
Yet to the man present at its birth, the moment lacked the drama of a new digital dawn. On Dec. 3, 1992, Mr. Papworth was seated before a computer terminal in a machinery room for the Sema company in Newbury, west of London, about to test a new messaging system for the Vodafone network.
Vodafone was having a Christmas party in a separate building, and Mr. Papworth, surrounded by colleagues, got down to work. He typed out the 14-character yuletide greeting to a company official at the party and hit “send.”
“I was a little bit nervous. I just wanted everything to work,” Mr. Papworth recalled. Word came back from the Christmas party: The text had landed.
Mr. Papworth, who moved to Montreal 10 years ago, said no one realized its potential right away.
“Back then, it was just intended to be used like an executive pager, to get a hold of people on the road,” he said. “No one knew it would evolve into such a monster.”
READ FULL STORY HERE
MONTREAL — The Globe and Mail
Had he known he was ushering in a global phenomenon, perhaps Neil Papworth of Montreal would have made his first words more momentous.
The bespectacled Mr. Papworth was a 22-year-old engineer on the job one December day when he was assigned to do something novel: Send a text message. And so Mr. Papworth, then an employee at a software company in England, typed out the words that would launch a trillion thumbs.
He wrote, “Merry Christmas.”
As far as inaugural messages go, it doesn’t rank with “What has God wrought,” which Samuel Morse composed for his first telegraph. Even Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here” had more gravitas.
Still, Mr. Papworth’s deed 20 years ago this month brought about an unheralded revolution of its own. In the two decades since, text messaging – or SMS, for short message service – has brought down U.S. legislators, spawned political intrigue, and been used to set up trysts and to vote for TV contestants.
Texts helped organize the protests of the Arab Spring and connect rebels in Syria; one photograph shows a Syrian insurgent holding a machine gun in one hand, a cellphone with his thumb poised over it in the other.
And for better or worse, texting has also spawned its own language. Its adherents fervently believe texting is gr8 4 U.
Yet to the man present at its birth, the moment lacked the drama of a new digital dawn. On Dec. 3, 1992, Mr. Papworth was seated before a computer terminal in a machinery room for the Sema company in Newbury, west of London, about to test a new messaging system for the Vodafone network.
Vodafone was having a Christmas party in a separate building, and Mr. Papworth, surrounded by colleagues, got down to work. He typed out the 14-character yuletide greeting to a company official at the party and hit “send.”
“I was a little bit nervous. I just wanted everything to work,” Mr. Papworth recalled. Word came back from the Christmas party: The text had landed.
Mr. Papworth, who moved to Montreal 10 years ago, said no one realized its potential right away.
“Back then, it was just intended to be used like an executive pager, to get a hold of people on the road,” he said. “No one knew it would evolve into such a monster.”
READ FULL STORY HERE
