160: The story behind text messaging

News
By Phil Nickinson
last updated

A long time ago (1985) in a faraway land (Germany) lived a man named Friedhelm Hillebrand. And he had a question: Just how many characters does the average person need to communicate?

Care to guess what the answer was?

Fast foward nearly a quarter-century and you can still see the fruits of Hillebrand's labor. Text messaging is as popular as ever (and often used more on phones than voice calls).

Anyhoo, the L.A. Times has a neat piece on Hillebrand and the birth of text messaging, as well as what the old guy's got up his sleeve next. Check it out.

Why Text Messages are Limited to 160 Characters

Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson

Phil is the father of two beautiful girls and is the Dad behind Modern Dad. Before that he spent seven years at the helm of Android Central. Before that he spent a decade in a newsroom of a two-time Pulitzer Prize-finalist newspaper. Before that — well, we don't talk much about those days. Subscribe to the Modern Dad newsletter!