The Inventor of SMS Passes Away

Matti Makonen, a pioneer in technology known as the father of SMS (text messaging), passed away at the age of 63. While many recognize the Finnish Makonen as the inventor of SMS, he always opposed this title (as well as 'father of SMS'), stating that at best he is the godfather of SMS, as this type of telephone service was designed by a team of engineers at Nokia, and he was not the sole mastermind behind the idea. According to Digital Trends, the initial idea for the SMS service was first proposed in 1984 at a pizza shop between Makonen and two of his colleagues. However, it took until 1992 to implement this idea. In December 1992, the first SMS was sent from a personal computer to a mobile phone. 'I do not consider the invention of the SMS service as a personal achievement; rather, it is a collective achievement and the result of teamwork at Nokia,' Makonen said in a 2012 interview with the BBC. He continued, 'The actual launch of the first SMS, as far as I know, was the work of Nokia, which built a phone (Nokia 2010) that could send SMS. This happened in 1994.' When asked in 2012 whether he thought SMS would still exist in twenty years given the presence of other services like Facebook or WhatsApp, he stated that sending SMS has a particular convenience that ensures it will continue to be used by people in some form (even if it is not called SMS). Apparently, Makonen's prediction has come true, as WhatsApp, another internet messaging application that was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion last year, is one of the popular messaging apps with nearly five hundred million monthly users. Telegram and Viber have also joined the world of messaging, with their user numbers increasing daily worldwide. Given that SMS was just an idea in 1984 and no invention had actually been made based on it, Matti Makonen never succeeded in registering it in his name. Makonen passed away due to illness at the age of 63.