Neil Papworth

Last updated
Neil Papworth
Born (1969-12-28) 28 December 1969 (age 54)
Reading, Berkshire, UK
NationalityEnglish
Occupation(s) Software architect
Designer, developer, & test engineer
Years active1988-present
Known forSending the world’s first text message
SpouseJennifer Papworth (2007-present)
Children3
Website neilpapworth.com

Neil Papworth (born 1969) is a British software architect, designer and developer. He is known as the sender of the first ever text message (also known as SMS message) in 1992. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Contents

Personal life

Neil Papworth was born on 28 December 1969 in Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Papworth obtained his HND (Higher National Diploma) in Computer Studies from the University of West London. He spent his childhood in Wokingham, Berkshire, and began his professional career at Ferranti International in Bracknell, United Kingdom. Papworth then settled in Toronto, Canada in 2000 and later moved to Montreal in 2002.

Career

Neil Papworth started his career at Ferranti International in Bracknell on aeronautical and military applications from 1988 to 1991. He designed and programmed a movable vehicle satellite antenna and implemented software for automated helicopter-landing aids.

In 1991, he began working for Sema Group in Reading, Berkshire. He spent a large amount of time from 1993 onwards travelling around the world installing SMS systems. He relocated to Sema Group's Toronto office in January 2000.

He settled in Montreal, Quebec in September 2002. He remained with Sema Group (which became Airwide Solutions) until 2011. Since then, he worked for Tekelec, a telecommunications company, recently bought by Oracle Corporation. He worked at Oracle on 4G related technologies. In 2018, he started working at TriNimbus, a company providing Amazon Web Services consulting to customers, which was subsequently acquired by Onica in 2018, and then Onica was subsequently acquired by Rackspace in 2019.

Contribution to text messaging

In 1992, Neil Papworth was working as a developer and test engineer at Sema Group Telecoms, in a team developing a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC) for their customer, Vodafone UK in Newbury, Berkshire. As part of this project, he sent the world's first text message, on 3 December 1992, at the age of 22. It was sent from a computer. The message was "Merry Christmas", and was sent to Richard Jarvis, a director at Vodafone, who was enjoying his office Christmas party. Richard Jarvis received the message on an Orbitel 901 handset. [8]

He said in 2017 that he only sends a few texts per day and that they are typically "fairly dull." He does not use the emoji menu. [9] Papworth gained popularity during the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the first text message, as highlighted in the press, and has been featured in several outlets such as a Super Bowl commercial, [7] a documentary movie, [10] a Jeopardy! question, [7] and radio talk shows.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

CORAL, short for Computer On-line Real-time Applications Language is a programming language originally developed in 1964 at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE), Malvern, Worcestershire, in the United Kingdom. The R was originally for "radar", not "real-time". It was influenced primarily by JOVIAL, and thus ALGOL, but is not a subset of either.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS</span> Text messaging service component

Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, typically transmitted over cellular networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Case sensitivity</span> Defines whether uppercase and lowercase letters are treated as distinct

In computers, case sensitivity defines whether uppercase and lowercase letters are treated as distinct (case-sensitive) or equivalent (case-insensitive). For instance, when users interested in learning about dogs search an e-book, "dog" and "Dog" are of the same significance to them. Thus, they request a case-insensitive search. But when they search an online encyclopedia for information about the United Nations, for example, or something with no ambiguity regarding capitalization and ambiguity between two or more terms cut down by capitalization, they may prefer a case-sensitive search.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkshire</span> County of England

The Royal County of Berkshire, commonly known as simply Berkshire, is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London to the east, Surrey to the south-east, Hampshire to the south, and Wiltshire to the west. Reading is the largest settlement and the county town.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message. The MMS standard extends the core SMS capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text messaging</span> Act of typing and sending a brief, digital message

Text messaging, or simply texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile phones, tablet computers, smartwatches, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile phone spam</span> Unwanted communication through a mobile phone

Mobile phone spam is a form of spam, directed at the text messaging or other communications services of mobile phones or smartphones. As the popularity of mobile phones surged in the early 2000s, frequent users of text messaging began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited commercial advertisements being sent to their telephones through text messaging. This can be particularly annoying for the recipient because, unlike in email, some recipients may be charged a fee for every message received, including spam. Mobile phone spam is generally less pervasive than email spam, where in 2010 around 90% of email is spam. The amount of mobile spam varies widely from region to region. In North America, mobile spam steadily increased after 2008 and accounted for half of all mobile phone traffic by 2019. In parts of Asia up to 30% of messages were spam in 2012.

External Machine Interface (EMI), an extension to Universal Computer Protocol (UCP), is a protocol primarily used to connect to short message service centres (SMSCs) for mobile telephones. The protocol was developed by CMG Wireless Data Solutions, now part of Mavenir.

Vodafone Limited, trading as Vodafone UK, is a British telecommunications company, owned by Vodafone Group, the world's eighth-largest telecommunications company. Vodafone is the third-largest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom, with 18.4 million subscribers as of November 2024, after O2 and EE, followed by Three. The country's first cellular phone call was made on the Vodafone network in 1985.

The M4 corridor is an area in the United Kingdom adjacent to the M4 motorway, which runs from London to South Wales. It is a major hi-tech hub. Important cities and towns linked by the M4 include London, Slough, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff, Port Talbot and Swansea. The area is also served by the Great Western Main Line, the South Wales Main Line, and London Heathrow Airport. Technology companies with major operations in the area include Adobe, Amazon, Citrix Systems, Dell, Huawei, Lexmark, LG, Microsoft, Novell, Nvidia, O2, Oracle, Panasonic, SAP, and Symantec.

An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.

Airwide Solutions was a privately held, but United States–based mobile messaging and wireless internet infrastructure company. It was acquired by Mavenir Systems in May 2011.

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a communication protocol standard for instant messaging, primarily for mobile phones, developed and defined by the GSM Association (GSMA). It aims to be a replacement of SMS and MMS on cellular networks with more modern features including high resolution image and video support, typing indicators, file sharing, and improved group chat functionality. As for MMS, mobile service must be activated. Development of RCS began in 2007 but early versions lacked features and interoperability; a new specification named Universal Profile was developed and has been continually rolled out since 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS language</span> Abbreviated slang used in text messaging

Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging.

iMessage Instant messaging service by Apple

iMessage is an instant messaging service developed by Apple Inc. and launched in 2011. iMessage functions exclusively on Apple platforms – including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS – as part of Apple's approach to inter-device integration, which has been described by media outlets as a means of achieving vendor lock-in. iMessage is accessed and used using the Messages app client.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Messages (Apple)</span> Instant messaging software applications

Messages is a text messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for its macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and visionOS operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dishfire</span> Covert global surveillance collection system and database

Dishfire is a covert global surveillance collection system and database run by the United States of America's National Security Agency (NSA) and the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) that collects hundreds of millions of text messages on a daily basis from around the world. A related analytic tool is known as Prefer.

TextSecure was an encrypted messaging application for Android that was developed from 2010 to 2015. It was a predecessor to Signal and the first application to use the Signal Protocol, which has since been implemented into WhatsApp and other applications. TextSecure used end-to-end encryption to secure the transmission of text messages, group messages, attachments and media messages to other TextSecure users.

mysms is a cross-platform text messaging service, based on Short Message Service (SMS), for smartphones, tablet computers, and laptop and desktop personal computers.

Content Guru is a cloud communications provider based in Bracknell, UK. The company provides services in over 60 countries through its cloud Contact Centre, Storm. These services are provided directly to customers and with partners such as Vodafone, Cinos and Rakuten. Clients include the National Health Service and Serco.

References

  1. ↑ "Hppy bthdy txt!". BBC. 3 December 2002. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Vodafone marks the 20th Anniversary of the world's first SMS". Malta Independent. 3 December 2012. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  3. ↑ Rashmee Ahmed (December 4, 2002). "UK hails 10th birthday of SMS". Times of India. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  4. ↑ Roberto Rocha (December 8, 2007). "OMG! Txt msgs r 15 yrs old :)". Montreal Gazette. Archived from the original on September 27, 2012. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  5. ↑ Ingri Peritz (November 30, 2012). "He sent the first text message 20 years ago, and forever changed the world". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  6. ↑ Tracy McVeigh (1 December 2012). "Text messaging turns 20". The Guardian. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 Paul Irish (December 3, 2012). "Text messaging turns 20 today". The Star. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  8. ↑ Mark Hachman (December 3, 2012). "SMS 4EVR, LOL: The Text Message Turns 20". PC Magazine. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  9. ↑ "'It didn't feel momentous at all,' says developer who sent world's 1st text message 25 years ago". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . 4 December 2017. Retrieved 3 December 2024.
  10. ↑ "Mobile Planet (2008)". IMDb. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.