Text Messaging Has Been Around Since 1992 – And No One Even Knew About It

Today's FUN 107 Morning Show Trivia Question asked - which popular thing, now used by about 270 million Americans, will soon celebrate it's 20th anniversary.  Listener guesses ranged from the Internet, to GPS, to the Camcorder.   The correct answer, believe it or not, was text messaging .  The first text was sent on December 3rd, 1992.   A 22 year old test engineer used what was then called SMS messaging on a personal computer to send the words "Merry Christmas" to a friend's cellular phone.

Although most of us haven't been texting for more than five or six years, we did talk to one listener who said he has been text messaging since it first became available in the late 1990's.  The cost was about 50 cents per text back then.   Now, thanks to competition between carriers, it costs much less.  What a great way to communicate with those we have no interest in talking to.