RIP, Matti Makkonen. Thank You For The SMS!
Er. Matti Makkonen, the inventor of short messaging service (SMS) is no more. Makkonen was 63 and fighting an illness and took his last breath on June 26th. Known to the world as 'Father of SMS', Makkonen was a Finnish engineer who pioneered the messaging service in the field of mobile communications. Makkonen graduated as an electrical engineer from the Oulu Technical College in 1976 and worked for various telecom companies. He avoided interviews, but BBC's Leo Kellon had managed to get him to answer his questions via SMS.
The idea of messaging over mobile phones was conceived over a pizza back in 1984. The first ever SMS "Merry Christmas" was delivered from a personal computer to a mobile device using Vodafone's network in UK on December 3, 1992.
Makkonen did not like being called the father of SMS. He maintained that he was not the only one who worked on the technology. In his interview to BBC, Makkonen said that he did not make a patentable innovation and hence does not regret not getting any money for it.
Makkonen did not like txtspk - the short for SMS lingo. He said it was his passion to write correct language (Finnish) and liked to use all 160 characters. He also said that he preferred touchscreens over physical keypads and believed text messaging will continue forever, in a different form. Do check out the interview on the link below.
RIP, Matti Makkonen.
Reference: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20555620" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Texting SMS pioneer Matti Makkonen 20 years on - BBC News</a>
The idea of messaging over mobile phones was conceived over a pizza back in 1984. The first ever SMS "Merry Christmas" was delivered from a personal computer to a mobile device using Vodafone's network in UK on December 3, 1992.
Makkonen did not like being called the father of SMS. He maintained that he was not the only one who worked on the technology. In his interview to BBC, Makkonen said that he did not make a patentable innovation and hence does not regret not getting any money for it.
Makkonen did not like txtspk - the short for SMS lingo. He said it was his passion to write correct language (Finnish) and liked to use all 160 characters. He also said that he preferred touchscreens over physical keypads and believed text messaging will continue forever, in a different form. Do check out the interview on the link below.
RIP, Matti Makkonen.
Reference: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20555620" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Texting SMS pioneer Matti Makkonen 20 years on - BBC News</a>
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