The first text message was sent 20 years ago, and its festive greeting was “Happy Christmas”.

Marking the anniversary, Vodafone said the message was sent by Neil Papworth, a test engineer with Anglo-French IT service company Sema, which supported Vodafone in the UK and Vodacom in Johannesburg to launch the first SMS.

Mr Papworth sent the text message from an R&D lab using a personal computer to Richard Jarvis, director at Vodafone, who used an Orbitel 901 handset.

He was trying to demonstrate that it was possible to send text messages outside the laboratory environment.

SMS messages were originally meant to be used by technicians to communicate and run tests, and for executive assistants to send messages to their bosses.

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