The first text message ever sent simply read 'Merry Christmas.'

On December 3, 1992, software engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS text message from a computer to a colleague’s Orbitel 901 mobile phone on the Vodafone network in the United Kingdom. The message was short and simple: “Merry Christmas.”

At the time, mobile phones themselves couldn’t yet send texts — only receive them — since phone keypads weren’t set up for composing messages, so Papworth had to type it out from a computer terminal instead. It would be another few years before texting from phone to phone became a practical, everyday feature.