The Accidental Invention of Texting

Text messaging was never meant for casual conversation. Originally, it was created as a hidden technical feature for engineers to test if cellular networks were working properly.

When the SMS standard was first developed in the 1980s, it was considered a low-priority utility for system maintenance. Developers thought that users would be too busy with voice calls to ever bother typing out short messages. It took years for the feature to reach the public, who eventually transformed it into the world's most dominant form of communication. Now, trillions of messages are sent every year, far exceeding original expectations.