December 3 is considered the birthday of SMS because it was on this day in 1992 that the world's first such message was sent On this day, a new technology was tested, which was developed for the cellular operator Vodafone The author of the historical message was 22-year-old programmer Neil Papworth, and the text consisted of only two words It was a Merry Christmas greeting intended for the director of Vodafone The message was sent from a computer, but later direct forwarding from one mobile phone to another became possible The idea of such a messaging scheme arose back in 1984 At this time, work was underway to implement the GSM standard Representatives of several companies from different European countries worked on the task As part of the project, engineers came up with the idea of using short messages to convey various information This is where the abbreviation SMS comes from These are the first letters of the three words of the phrase "Short Message Service" The idea turned out to be unexpectedly promising; today residents of all countries of the world know what SMS is and use the technology in everyday life The new service gained great popularity a few years later It especially increased in 2000, when it became possible to send SMS to users of other cellular networks, and not just within the network Such messages allow you to: • quickly send the necessary information; • send a message at any time, including when it is inconvenient to call; • do not waste time on telephone conversations; • save money on a call; • send data in such a way that you can return to it (re-read message if necessary) The maximum message length is 140-160 characters in Latin (with 8-bit or 7-bit encoding, respectively) or 70 characters in Cyrillic This led to the widespread use of the Latin alphabet in SMS correspondence, as well as the emergence of some generally accepted abbreviations Today, the phrases LOL and OMG are even included in the Oxford English Dictionary They are known and used by speakers not only of English, but also of many others Also, the appearance of “short messages” contributed to the emergence and development of a system of communication using “emoticons” These stylized graphic images of human faces allow you to convey dozens of emotions in one or two characters, without wasting time on correspondence