Neil Papworth Sends the First SMS Text Message to Richard Jarvis

On December 3, 1992, using a personal computer, Neil Papworth of Sema Group in Newbury, Berkshire, England sent the first commercial SMS (short message service) text message to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone who received it on his on his Orbitel 901 mobile phone. Since mobil phones did not yet have keyboards Papworth typed the message on his computer and sent it to Jaris. The text of the message was "Merry Christmas." Jarvis did not reply because there was no way to send a text from a phone at the time. That had to wait for Nokia's first mobile phone in 1993.

On December 21, 2021 the Aguttes auction house in Paris auctioned a unique NFT of the first SMS text together with a unique acrylic replica of the text. The presale estimate was 100,000 to 200,000 Euros; the NFT sold for 107,000 Euros ($121,000).