33 years ago today, on December 3, 1992 (November 10, 1992 lunar calendar), the world's first text message was born. About 10 years ago, "text message" was an essential tool for our daily communication. But now, "text message" has become a way for us to receive various verification codes and notifications. But 25 years ago, when the world's first text message was born in the UK, no one imagined that this thing would revolutionize the way mobile phones communicate in the next decade, nor did they expect this to be a big step in the history of human communication. Picture source: On December 3, 1992, Vodafone sent the first text message. On December 3, 1992, Vodafone in the UK sent the world's first text message to a mobile phone via the GSM network on the computer side. Neil Papworth, a British engineer working at Vodafone, was the first person in the world to send a text message. He sent the text message to the mobile phone of Vodafone's communications director, Richard Jarvis, with a simple sentence: "Merry Christmas." Neil Papworth, Photo Source: Ladbible However, the success of sending the first text message did not mean that the function was widely used. Due to the limitations of the hardware and network at the time (sending text messages needed to be based on the GSM network, which was not fully mature in 1992), it was only after 1994 that text messages were really popularized for commercial and civilian use. Nokia E90, source: YouTube With the later device updates of mobile phone manufacturers such as Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia, "SMS" has been applied to various countries and regions around the world. Even people of different levels, skin colors, and countries can communicate and express ideas with the outside world through simple typing. According to the statistics of the United States, from June 2000 to June 2017, the monthly SMS sent in the United States alone has increased from 12 million in 2000 to 781 billion per month in 2017. In other words, in the 17 years of the development of smartphones, the amount of SMS sent has increased by 60,000 times. The development of mobile communication technology in our country is a little later than that in foreign countries. In 1998, China Mobile and China Unicom began to expand the SMS business. In 2000, the volume of mobile phone text messages in our country exceeded 1 billion. Since 2001, our country's communication services have reached 18.90 billion, and in 2004 it reached its peak 90 billion. However, with the rapid development of instant messaging tools in recent years, the growth rate of "SMS" sending in our country has gradually become slow. According to MIIT data, in 2012, the number of mobile text messages sent nationwide reached 897.30 billion, an increase of only 2.1% year-on-year, the lowest growth rate in four years. It can be seen that the emergence of instant messaging tools such as WeChat and iMessage and online social platforms has indeed affected our SMS usage habits. Now, what else do you use SMS for?